MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. Russia’s economy turning to the East and expanding co-operation with countries of the Asia-Pacific region does not imply disrupting relations with the European Union and the United States, a respected Russian politician and former Russian prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, said.

“Diversification of the economic system of Russia, for which the eastern direction is becoming very important, does not mean that we are ready to curtail our ties with European and other states,” Primakov, an academician and member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with TASS.

Primakov saw no prospect of abandoning the post-industrial model of development in its focus on raw materials projects oriented towards China. It is a thing of the past to say that this model is only limited to science and technology and the development of the services sphere.

“ Gone are the opinions such model is confined to science, engineering and the services. World experience shows that the countries that have ventured into the post-industrial world never stop to be raw materials producing and industrial ones. Contrasting the post-industrial and industrial models is not relevant,” Primakov said, explaining that global practice shows that countries that have entered the post-industrial world do not stop being industrial and raw materials economies.

“For Russia, one of the pressing problems is combining re-industrialisation with modernisation,” Primakov said.

The full version of Primakov's interview