RT | 4 August 2014
Barack Obama has made light of Russia in his latest interview, coming up with four facts to illustrate the poor state of things in the country, which – strangely enough – had little to do with reality.
“I do think it’s important to keep perspective. Russia doesn’t make anything,” Obama said in his interview with the Economist. “Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.”
RT has gathered the more recent statistics on the subjects touched upon by the US president.
‘Russia doesn’t make anything’ – WRONG
According to Russia’s Central Bank, the export of products and services has brought Russia $593 billion in 2013.
$355 billion in the figure was due to oil and gas sales, but the remaining $238 million came from other – non-energy – sectors of economy.
Russia has long-ago established itself as the world’s second largest suppliers of arms after the US.
Moscow sold $15.7 billion worth of weaponry to 60 countries, including the likes of China and India, last year.
The country also profited $15 billion from exporting agricultural products, first of all, such grain crops as wheat, rice and corn.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55LCxj-N5mI?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]
Russian high-tech solutions in atomics, space industry, aviation, telecom, computer software and many other fields are also in great demand around the globe.
‘Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow’ – WRONG
In terms of migration, Russia is ranked second in the world and is only surpassed by the US, the United Nations have stated. According to UN estimations, there’s currently 11 million foreigners residing in Russia.
Since the fall of USSR, Russia has been an attractive destination to descendants of former Soviet republics, with the flow of immigration increased four times in the last decade, Lubov Eltsova, deputy trade minister, said.
In 2013, over 420,000 immigrants arrived in the country, Russia’s Federal Migration Service calculated.
According to the agency, there are also 3.7 million foreigners, who are staying in Russia illegally, without proper registration.
As for Moscow, the Russian capital hosted 1 million migrants in 2013, Federal Migration Service said. This means every twelfth person living in the multimillion city is a “guest of the capital,” according to official data only.
‘Life expectancy… around 60 years old’ – WRONG
Back in 2000, following a decade of “wild 90s,” male life expectancy really was at catastrophic level in Russia, as it stood at just 58 years.
But this this marker has been improving at a good pace since then, reaching 64 years, according to World Health Organization.
As for women, “we’ve have reached the highest level in the history of our country, including Soviet and post-Soviet periods – 76.5 years,” Veronika Skvortsova, Health minister, announced this April.
The annual birth rate in Russia has been steadily increasing by 100,000 annually over the last few years, and has recently exceeded death rate. Over the period of January-June 2014, more than 935.5 thousand of children were born in Russia.
According to Russian deputy prime minister for social affairs, Olga Golodets, “it is desirable that the birth rate should reach 2 million… which would allow many of the risks for our state to be removed in this generation.”
