MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to prepare testing and the gradual commissioning of unmanned vehicles.

As stated in the list of instructions published on Friday on the Kremlin’s website, the president demanded that the government, with the participation of interested organizations and representatives of the scientific and technological business community, develops a set of measures for testing and phasing operation of highly automated vehicles on public roads without the presence of a test engineer in the vehicle.

General Director of Yandex Arkady Volozh at a meeting between the president and investors on March 11, noted that in China or the United States, regulation in the field of unmanned vehicles is designed to make countries advanced in this area, while in Russia the legislation does not allow this. In connection with this, Volozh proposed to adopt the relevant standards in Russia, so that, in his words, advanced technological regulation would be as competitive as the technology itself.

In addition, Putin demanded "to analyze the practice of creating and operating special units and venture capital funds of state corporations and companies with state participation, as well as other tools used by such companies to finance the development of high technologies." The president set a deadline of July 1, 2020, to fulfill this order.