KALININGRAD, September 1. /TASS/. Russia should advance and be a leader in key areas of development, have "keys" to certain branches of science, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at an open discussion ‘Conversation about important things’ in Kaliningrad.

"We ourselves should develop such key areas of development within our country and not be catching up, [we shouldn’t be] oriented only to what we can do no worse, we should be leaders in key areas. We should have in our hands the so-called ‘keys’ to certain branches of science," Putin said.

The president also stressed that a number of scientific branches globally are difficult to develop without Russia, and in general it is almost impossible to "cut off" someone in the modern world. ·"As for the fact that someone can ‘cut off’ someone from something, it is difficult to do so in the modern world, in the world of information dissemination, including scientific information, the Internet and so on. How is that imaginable? Impossible practically. Some areas of branches of science, technology are difficult to develop without Russia at all. In physics, for example, there are large international projects with European partners where we have more than 70% of participation <...>. Let’s say, in space, despite all the difficulties, our partners announce that they want to continue cooperation," Putin said.