— Which areas of St. Petersburg’s cooperation with EAEU countries do you consider most promising today?
— Today St. Petersburg is in practical terms becoming one of the key platforms for Eurasian integration. The President of Russia has for several years running made our city the venue for EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) summits. And beyond these summits, delegations from these countries are given special attention here.
Among the most promising directions for the Northern Capital’s cooperation with EAEU states, I would highlight several interconnected tracks. First and foremost, industrial cooperation. For seven consecutive years the industrial production index (IPP — indeks promyshlennogo proizvodstva) in St. Petersburg has outperformed the national average. Over the past five years the city’s industrial growth has reached 60 percent. We are home to advanced competencies in mechanical engineering, energy, pharmaceuticals, radio electronics, and instrument-making. In the new environment, the distributed production model within the EAEU — where value chains are built across several countries — is especially in demand. This applies to components, engineering solutions, and joint R&D alike.
I would single out shipbuilding and maritime technologies separately. Our city possesses a unique engineering tradition and production base in this field. For EAEU countries it represents an opportunity to build joint competencies — from the merchant fleet to ice-class shipbuilding and services for Arctic trade routes.
St. Petersburg’s prospects in EAEU logistics can hardly be overstated. Our city has always been Russia’s 'maritime gateway', but today we are a node on new Eurasian routes — vital for the reorientation of trade flows. This includes sea access for Belarusian exports through our deep-water port of Bronka, and the reorientation from West to East and South, including toward the Caspian region. It is no coincidence that the new logistics realities were discussed here in April at the first International Transport and Logistics Forum — held on the banks of the Neva by decision of the President of Russia and attended by around 6,000 participants from 82 countries. Multimodal solutions are particularly important for St. Petersburg: port infrastructure, railway hubs, dry terminals, and integration with international transport corridors.
I would note the strong prospects in education too. St. Petersburg’s universities are globally recognised centres for shaping a common Eurasian personnel space. Joint programmes, engineering training, exchanges, and research consortia are all becoming part of our long-term integration.
St. Petersburg is also successfully addressing the objectives set by the President of Russia on technological sovereignty. Cooperation in IT, microelectronics, artificial intelligence and its applications, and transport platforms is therefore a question of the strategic resilience of the entire EAEU.
— Can you give examples of projects already being successfully implemented by St. Petersburg together with EAEU member states?
— The city’s key partner is Belarus. The direction of our rapprochement is set by the Presidents of our two states. The Republic of Belarus accounts for more than half of St. Petersburg’s external trade with the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries.
In the interests of food security and import source diversification, St. Petersburg is conducting targeted work to increase supplies of Belarusian food products, which in recent years have become a cost-effective, high-quality alternative to products from unfriendly states. Reliable Belarusian equipment — purchased by our city for passenger transport, urban landscaping, and road maintenance — is making a substantial contribution to the infrastructure development of the Northern Capital. Belarusian enterprises are actively involved in renewing our electric transport fleet. This year we received 100 large-class serial overnight-charging electric buses of the MAZ‑303E23100 model — the largest single delivery of such vehicles to any Russian region. The key feature: near‑100% localisation within the Union State (Soyuznoye gosudarstvo — the political union of Russia and Belarus). All components are manufactured in Russia and the Republic of Belarus.
Products of the Nevsky Lift company — a joint venture with Mogilyovliftmash (the leading Belarusian lift manufacturer) — are in high demand on the St. Petersburg market, accounting for more than half of all equipment installed during major lift refurbishment work in St. Petersburg apartment buildings.
We are actively expanding trade and industrial cooperation with Uzbekistan. A joint list of priority investment projects has been approved. To promote the products of St. Petersburg companies, a St. Petersburg Business Centre will open in Tashkent this year. Work continues on the project to create a 'St. Petersburg Quarter' in New Tashkent — a concept approved by President of Uzbekistan Sh. M. Mirziyoyev — and a number of St. Petersburg construction companies have expressed interest in participating.
Cooperation with Kyrgyzstan is gaining momentum, with digitalisation as one of the leading drivers. Last year St. Petersburg transferred free of charge to the Republic a licence for the Antinar software — a comprehensive regional drug situation monitoring system. Dialogue has been established with the Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Digital Development of the Republic on transferring St. Petersburg’s experience in creating situational centres. Following a visit by a Kyrgyz specialist delegation and a series of meetings with St. Petersburg software developers in March 2026, preliminary agreements were reached on the Kyrgyz side acquiring our digital solutions.
— What do the words 'openness' and 'trust' mean for St. Petersburg today? Has the city’s own understanding of its 'internationalism' changed in recent years?
— St. Petersburg was never defined solely by its contacts with the West. The East has always been present in our city. This is recalled by the mosque on the Petrograd Side (Petrogradskaya Storona — the historic district on the northern bank of the Neva) — not the northernmost of major mosques, built with funds from the Emir of Bukhara. Visit the Hermitage, the Ethnographic Museum, the restored Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum (the imperial palace complex west of St. Petersburg, whose Chinese Palace of 1768 is one of the finest examples of chinoiserie in Russia).
We remain committed to the values that connected us with Europe in the time of Peter the Great: centuries-old Christian traditions, openness to fair and free trade, the inviolability of private property, and Russia’s participation in international alliances on equal terms. The West has moved away from those values. But the 'internationalism' of St. Petersburg and of our country is not defined by belonging to a single geographical orbit. We are capable of building stable relationships with very different centres of power.
St. Petersburg’s openness today means above all a readiness for equal partnership. The city remains a space for dialogue — of cultures, technologies, business, and science. Only this dialogue has become more multipolar.
In the light of recent events around the world, trust is acquiring special value today. In an era of global turbulence, it becomes the foundation of long-term projects — investment, infrastructure, and humanitarian. And St. Petersburg has historically known how to work in precisely this logic: through reputation, the quality of institutions, engineering culture, and the educational environment.
— How is the city overcoming the negative situation inexports caused by the departure of Western companies from St. Petersburg and the imposition of unprecedented sanctions against our country?
— We are strengthening partnership with friendly states, deepening the traditional EAEU directions, and working actively with countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. We are expanding our network of contacts, creating new formats of interaction and new logistics chains. We are also building new air connections: in 2025 the international passenger flow at our Pulkovo airport grew to 4.9 million people. At the transport and logistics forum mentioned earlier, agreements were reached to prepare direct flights to Sri Lanka.
St. Petersburg currently trades with 202 states. Friendly countries account for around 84 percent of our trade turnover. Since the city produces an extraordinarily wide range of goods, our exports are significantly diversified — mechanical engineering products, power engineering equipment, electronics, medical instruments, pharmaceuticals, light industry, and food processing. Many sectors of non-commodity, non-energy exports are showing strong positive momentum. According to customs data, non-commodity non-energy exports in St. Petersburg rose by almost 30 percent in 2025, driven by industrial output — including high-technology products — which grew 27.4 percent with support from the city and the federal centre.
We observe a clear trend here: directional diversification is increasing, and business is adapting to new conditions — finding and accessing new markets even against a backdrop of a planned cooling of the economy. New opportunities are being opened precisely by the transformation of global trade routes.
Broadly speaking, St. Petersburg’s 'internationalism' has ceased to be purely an external characteristic. It is now largely defined by the city’s internal resilience — our capacity to preserve competencies, develop modern production, create our own technologies, and remain open to the world at the same time.
— Is St. Petersburg experiencing growing interest from Global South countries — India, the Gulf states, Africa, South-East Asia?
— This interest is already moving from the stage of declarations into the stage of practical projects. For Global South countries our city is not simply a major Russian metropolis — it is also an important point of access to the vast Eurasian market.
For India, logistics, pharmaceuticals, education, the IT sector, and power engineering are of particular importance. The Gulf states are actively looking at infrastructure investment, port logistics, food security, and high-technology projects. South-East Asia shows interest in industrial cooperation, transport routes, and scientific collaboration.
Africa deserves separate mention. Following the second Russia-Africa Summit held in St. Petersburg in 2023 with our President’s participation, the formation of an entirely new architecture of engagement began. St. Petersburg is entering the markets of the African continent and is operating as a platform for personnel training, medical projects, engineering education, urban technologies, and industrial partnership. The number of contacts is growing; their quality is changing. This is a transition from isolated episodes to systematic presence — the opening of representative offices, joint programmes, long-term contracts.
In many respects St. Petersburg is today becoming one of the symbols of the new geography of the world economy — more distributed, less dependent on a single notional centre, and based on a network of regional partnerships.
— Which infrastructure projects are fundamental to the city’s future within the EAEU and the world economy at large? Ports, railways, dry terminals, international corridors?
— Of primary importance is the modernisation of the port system and the entire logistics ecosystem around the Baltic. Dry terminals (skhiye porty — inland container terminals handling customs and freight consolidation away from the seaport), distribution centres, and the integration of sea, rail, and road transport. For St. Petersburg this is an opportunity to become the largest North Eurasian freight redistribution hub.
The development of railway infrastructure is critically important — above all in the direction of the North-South International Transport Corridor (the major multimodal route linking Russia and the Baltic with Iran, India, and the Gulf via the Caspian) and the eastern vector. A new map of global trade is effectively being drawn, and St. Petersburg must be embedded in it as one of the key nodes. This will be served by the construction of the Latitudinal High-Speed Highway (Shirotнaya Magistral' Skorostnogo Dvizheniya — the planned high-speed ring road circling St. Petersburg), which will accelerate freight movement toward Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and via Vologda eastward. And, of course, the implementation of Russia’s first high-speed main line Moscow-St. Petersburg, initiated by our President.
The digitalisation of logistics is a separate subject. Competition is no longer only for the depth of ports or the volume of warehouses, but for the speed of data processing, customs procedures, and freight flow management — where fully deploying artificial intelligence is essential. The cities that prevail are those capable of offering a comprehensive and technologically advanced logistics environment. Infrastructure projects today are investments not only in transport but in the competitiveness of the Northern Capital.
— St. Petersburg has always existed at the intersection of civilisations and trade routes. What historical role do you think the city is beginning to play now — in the era of a new world order taking shape?
— In the twenty-first century our city is returning to its historical mission: to serve as a reliable pillar of Russia in securing its national interests, and to connect different economic, cultural, and civilisational frameworks.
Here, on the banks of the Neva, the interests of North and South, East and West, industry and science, logistics and culture all converge. This is not only a matter of geography. St. Petersburg has historically known how to work with ideas, technologies, education, and engineering. It is precisely such cities that become especially valued in the era of the rejection of the unipolar world and of globalisation dictated by the West.
We see how the focus of people’s interest everywhere is shifting from the uniformly similar to local and regional products — both material and cultural. The world economy is beginning to be structured around large macro-regions, new transport corridors, and technological alliances. Within this system, St. Petersburg is capable of taking on the role of Eurasia’s intellectual, industrial, and logistical centre.
We have many competitive advantages here — and let me emphasise again: not only geographical ones. St. Petersburg possesses a rare quality: the combination of deep historical identity and openness to everything new and advanced, and the capacity to adapt quickly to new conditions. This makes it not simply a participant in change, but one of the metropolises where the new architecture of international relations and the world economy is being formed.