MOSCOW, June 27. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized foreign drug companies for pushing their products through local medical institutions and via doctors in Russia using their deep-pocketed resources.

"Unfortunately, foreign pharmaceutical companies attracted some heads of our medical institutions, and medical workers in 30 regions. And they pushed their medicines [on to the Russian market], paying quite a lot of money for it. We saw that under just one scheme they doled out 500 million [rubles]," he said at a meeting with Yury Chikhanchin, Head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service.

Putin noted that such practice also exists in the EU and worldwide.

"They do it everywhere. They do it in Europe and overseas too. This is how they operate," he said.

In turn, Chikhanchin said that his agency together with FSB are doing their best to stop this practice.

"Now, especially under these conditions, when we have sanctions, and we are forced to live by these rules, we must put an end to the emergence of drugs [through this practice]. We are now working with the FSB, and we will try," he said.