President Vladimir Putin ordered top executives of state companies to speed efforts to shift to domestic software, hinting that future rounds of western sanctions could leave them cut off from the imported programs they rely on.
“Colleagues need to understand that at some point even what they use today will, for well-known reasons—we won’t speak of sad topics here—simply be closed off and that’s it,” Putin told government officials in a televised videoconference Wednesday.
Some Russian state companies and government agencies had their access to foreign programs cut off after being targeted by U.S. and European sanctions in recent years. The Kremlin responded by mandating state firms shift to locally developed programs.
Tensions over Ukraine have led the U.S. and its allies to threaten possible new restrictions on Russia in recent weeks.