The Chairman of the Russian Accounts Chamber Alexey Kudrin has discussed with new U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan bilateral cooperation and the work of the Russian Accounts Chamber as the chair of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), the embassy said on Thursday.
“Ambassador John Sullivan is interested in maintaining open channels of communication with representatives of the Russian government to continue working together to strengthen relations between the United States and Russia,” the U.S. Embassy in Russia said.
“New U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan has visited the Accounts Chamber. We exchanged information on cooperation between our countries and on the work of the Accounts Chamber as the chair of INTOSAI. We expressed mutual hope for easing sanctions in the future. The ambassador plays hockey, and this will help him in his work in Russia,” Kudrin wrote on his official Twitter account on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Accounts Chamber said on Friday that budget spending on Russian science is growing, but in many respects it remains ineffective. By the number of patent applications alone, Russia is almost 16 times behind the United States and 38 behind China, the institution said.
Although the total costs of Russian science have increased 13 times since 2000, from 76.7 billion ($1.2 billion) to 1028.2 billion rubles ($16.18 billion), this area remains insufficiently productive and does not respond to the big challenges facing society and the state, says a report of the Accounts Chamber named “Determination of the main reasons restraining scientific development in the Russian Federation”.
