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Kremlin Admits Russian AI Lags Far Behind US and China Leaders
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Russia is lagging significantly behind the United States and China in the development of artificial intelligence technologies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted, The Moscow Times reported on July 28.
Speaking at the “Territory of Meanings” forum , Peskov stated that while domestic Russian models—such as Sberbank’s GigaChat and Yandex’s neural networks—perform at a high level domestically, they “cannot compete with the leading American language models.”
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Despite the widening technological gap, Peskov insisted that Moscow remains among “the top five countries participating in the race,” adding, “I hope that with superhuman efforts, we will close this gap.”
The Kremlin spokesman also cautioned against using Western foundational code, criticizing tech firm Yandex for taking its “first pebble from abroad” rather than building its platform entirely from scratch. “Only something that contains no external pebbles can be truly independent,” Peskov warned, claiming that foreign components could contain “traps and backdoors that, in a hostile environment like the one we face now, could shoot against us.”
He argued that while reverse engineering is acceptable for routine technologies, critical fields like artificial intelligence require fully sovereign solutions developed entirely within Russia, The Moscow Times noted.
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Peskov’s admission reflects skepticism among Russian tech industry executives who view the gap with Western and Chinese developers as virtually unbridgeable. Natalya Kaspersky, head of the Domestic Software association and IT company InfoWatch, warned that Russia has little chance of achieving a breakthrough in foundational AI.
“When you walk on the same tracks that trains run on, there is generally no chance of catching up with that train,” Kaspersky observed, noting that competing with global leaders requires billions of dollars that domestic firms do not possess, according to The Moscow Times.
Russia’s drive for digital self-reliance has faced pushback from within its own corporate elite, with state-backed oil giant Rosneft previously formally warning that developing “sovereign” neural networks in total isolation from the global tech ecosystem is technically unworkable.
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