ULAD-UDE, August 24 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's president criticized on Monday media reports that claimed a recent fatal accident at a south Siberia hydropower plant indicated that Russia was on the verge of a technological collapse.
Dmitry Medvedev said that following last week's accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power station, in which at least 69 people died, "a host of apocalyptic media comments" had appeared "both at home and abroad."
"The gist of all of these reports is the same; this is the start of a technological crisis in Russia - the Chernobyl of the 21st century," said Medvedev, speaking in the east Siberian republic of Buryatia.
He also said that the reports had delighted "those who do not like Russia within its current borders and its role in the international arena."
However, Medvedev admitted that Russia was technologically backward. "Despite the tragedy and the deaths, all this [talk] is rubbish. The truth is that our country is seriously backward technologically," he said.
He said, speaking at a conference devoted to Siberia's development, that this technological backwardness was a "challenge" that must be met.
Britain's The Independent said earlier this week that "the blast [at the dam] highlighted the dangers of Russia's creaking infrastructure."
The paper said Russian authorities had been reluctant to invest some of its oil and gas revenues to update Soviet-era infrastructure: "A lack of expertise combined with government apathy means that Russian power plants, along with dangerous roads, decaying utilities, aging transport fleets and creaking buildings, continue to claim victims."
The paper also said, referring to Russian business daily Kommersant, that experts had warned in the late 1990s that the dam was in a state of dangerous neglect.
The dam accident came on the same day as a suicide bomb in Ingushetia that claimed the lives of over 20 police officers and a crash at an air show near Moscow.
Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta led a recent edition with an article entitled "No Point Blaming August," a reference to the accidents, terrorist acts and political upheavals that traditionally hit Russia in August. The article said instead that the blame for recent events lay with concrete officials in concrete posts.
