Sovereignty as the Main Export Product
On October 9, a panel discussion titled “National Code Without Borders: Exporting Art, Technology and Media” took place on the sidelines of the 2nd Global Digital Forum in Moscow. Experts concluded that a cultural code can be a powerful market tool, helping products stand out internationally, build a recognizable image and forge emotional connections with audiences abroad.
Just 15 years ago, one refrain could be heard at virtually every economic forum: Russia needed to wean itself off its dependence on oil. The country was portrayed as a mere source of raw materials for the global economy. Today, the picture has changed dramatically. The rent-based economic model is giving way to one built on exporting knowledge, technology and, most importantly, cultural code.
At a panel session on exporting products from the creative and technology industries, experts described a tectonic shift: Russia has entered the global arena with a unique offering that has no equivalent elsewhere. Tsifrovoy Kovcheg (The Digital Ark) project is an export-ready solution for building national encyclopedias from the ground up. It allows any country to preserve its language and history for future generations without handing its cultural memory over to foreign IT monopolies.
For decades, Western tech giants have conditioned the world to depend on their technologies. By buying their software, countries have found themselves trapped in proprietary ecosystems. Russia is now offering an alternative.
“Trading is one thing; building independence is another,” said pithily Andrey Samchenko, Director of International Strategic Projects at Positive Technologies, succinctly summing up the new approach.
Russia is positioning itself not merely as a vendor, but as a country with unique experience in surviving and developing under unprecedented pressure. Anastasia Pavlenko, Deputy Executive Director and Director for Strategic Partnerships at Innopraktika in Russia, expands on this idea. She notes that foreign markets show enormous demand for the “cultural DNA of Russian IT professionals and engineers.” International customers are buying not just a box of software, but an entire knowledge infrastructure.
“We export not technological dependence, but technological sovereignty and Russian technological DNA,” Pavlenko emphasizes.
Exporting knowledge is about more than code; it is also about ideas and meaning. In an era dominated by neural networks trained on Western sources or an unfiltered mix of internet content, preserving national identity has become an urgent concern. Elena Litovchenko, Deputy General Director of the Ruwiki Internet Encyclopedia in Russia, pointed to a troubling trend: without their own verified digital knowledge base, a people’s culture can simply be wiped out by neural networks.
“If a country has no digital knowledge base of its own, it risks being erased from the digital landscape in the literal sense,” she warned.
The Digital Ark project is one response to this challenge. Recognizing that the world needs a Russian product is only half the battle. The other half is figuring out how to export it. Entering new markets alone can cost a fortune. According to Stanislav Iodkovsky, Member of the General Council of Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia) and President of IVA Technologies in Russia, setting up a fully staffed local office with engineers and marketing specialists costs $5 million to $10 million a year in each country.
Government-backed cooperation can help overcome this barrier. Iodkovsky cited a compelling example of synergy with Rosatom. When building modular nuclear power plants in Indonesia, Russia offers more than energy: it provides an integrated sovereign technology ecosystem, with data centers built alongside the power facilities.
At the same time, a network of technology hubs is taking shape internationally. In India, dozens of pilot projects involving drones and facial recognition systems are already underway. In Africa, Russian expertise in digitizing public services is helping establish basic financial infrastructure.
Serbia offers a telling example. It is becoming a major destination for Russian creative businesses and IT companies. Perko Matović, State Secretary at the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications of the Republic of Serbia, recalled that cooperation rests on foundations laid centuries ago. Referring to a 19th-century encounter in which a Serbian metropolitan responded to a Russian tsar’s greeting by saying, “No one is greater than the Russian tsar,” he noted that Russian companies enjoy a competitive advantage in Serbia. The country, he said, is imbued with affection for and trust in Russians.
Today, Serbia is more than a brotherly nation: it is an open door. It is the only European country where Russian media are not banned, business registration is transparent, and there is a willingness to host Russian data centers. Here, trust translates into concrete business opportunities.
In closing, session moderator Anna Koshehadze summed up the transformation the country has undergone. Whereas exports were once associated almost exclusively with natural resources, Russia now offers the world products that improve quality of life and give people greater freedom. These range from cybersecurity systems that protect banks against fraud to Russian animated films that bring positive messages to children on the other side of the world. Russia is no longer simply catching up or copying others. It is offering the world a “third voice,” an alternative to Western models, drawing on its own strengths: engineering expertise, cultural code and historical truth.
