Putin wanted AI supremacy. Now Russia is struggling to stay in the race.

ment and said that Russia’s economic and geopolitical isolation prevents companies from accessing funding and gaining the ability to scale beyond their comparatively small domestic market.

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With AI's potential to reshape the global economy, countries are scrambling to assert control over their AI infrastructure.

(REUTERS)

With Al's potential to reshape the global economy, countries are scrambling to assert control over their Al infrastructure, data and models to avoid strategic dependence. In the military domain, too, readiness increases greatly depends on sovereign AI capabilities, from battlefield decision-support tools to autonomous defense systems.

For Moscow, this imperative is especially acute given its escalating standoff with the West.

“We cannot allow critical dependence on foreign systems,” Putin said at an AI conference last month. “For Russia, this is a matter of state, technological and value sovereignty.”

Russian officials have acknowledged the shortcomings, but say that domestic models rival foreign ones and are improving fast. Others are more blunt.

“The vast majority of our industries are millions of light years away from AI,” Herman Gref , the chief executive of state-owned lender Sberbank, which is leading Russia's AI efforts, said earlier this year.

It isn’t just Russia’s Al models that are falling behind.

At a Moscow tech conference in November, the country’s first AI-equipped humanoid robot— named AIDOL—hobbled onstage to the “Rocky” theme, attempted a wave and promptly toppled over. Organizers cut the demonstration short and removed the machine. The organizers said the robot will learn from the “consequences of its own actions.”