ABSTRACT
Russia-EU economic relations during Putin's second presidency and the first year of Medvedev's presidential term remained the main driving force of the bilateral partnership and developed reasonably steadily. Nevertheless, the crisis revealed uncertainty of the future of Russia-EU positive economic interdependence, its conditionality upon prospects of crisis and especially post-crisis development of the Russian economy and its potential participation in the recovery of an aggregate economy of the EU. The system of special development institutes aiming to ensure the growth of concrete sectors of economy, regions and enterprises through direct state financing or state-private partnership in fact emerged in Russia only in 2005. The world's financial-economic crisis sharply broke off the boom period in trade and investment development both in the EU and Russia and in their relations. In 2007, Russia for the first time ranked second together with Switzerland in extra-EU exports and third in extra-EU imports.
