MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he has maintained his friendship with all of his German friends.
"I have very many friends there [in Germany], as you know, and all of these friendships, by the way, have endured. My real German friends have stayed with me. We’re always having a laugh and joking with each other," Putin revealed, speaking at the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on Thursday.
According to the head of state, since Russia and Germany are neighbors, there are mutual jokes. "I'll digress now completely. We call cockroaches ‘prussians.’ That's what the big, red ones are called," the president said, showing the approximate size of the insects with his fingers. "And, in Germany they are called ‘russen’ - 'russians,' you see?" he laughed, adding that mutual jokes always occur between neighbors.
Putin noted that even before the events of 2022, when foreign automakers left the Russian market, the Russian auto industry’s main partners were well-known German companies. "They kept glancing back to see what the illustrious princess over there across the sea had to say," Putin said, referring to the ending of [Alexander Griboyedov’s 19th century satire] 'Woe from Wit'. "Ah! My God! What will / Duchess Marya Alekseevna say!" "All the time, we were glancing back at the squawking coming from Washington and thinking about how to come up with something, how to think up ways to make some step toward cooperating with them. But, that finally came to an end, and ended with what we have now. Maybe it’s better that things are a bit more definitive," he added.
When Sergey Kogogin, director general of truckmaker Kamaz, acknowledged from the congress rostrum that he himself could not believe how many issues with respect to import substitution had been resolved so rapidly and effectively, Putin noted that in this regard he could not help but recall a well-known saying. "This will not sound offensive to our German partners. <...> What is good for a Russian is death for a German (the Russian equivalent of the expression ‘one man's meat is another man's poison’ - TASS)," he said, noting that hardly anyone but those raised on Russian soil would be able to meet all of the challenges faced by the Russian automobile industry. "But these challenges prompt us to work in such an effective way, and we are succeeding," the head of state concluded.