Russia needs to attract a few of the best...
Vladislav Surkov, first deputy head of the presidential administration, said in an interview published in the business daily on Monday that there was a lot of "beautiful but unwise" talk about reversing Russia"s brain drain.
"We must bring the best here, and whether they are ours or not is a small matter. If we attract a few landmark names, known in their professional field, this will open doors to us, show that it is possible and necessary to be here," said the official, who chairs a working group to develop a Russian "Silicon Valley."
"We need a new "German settlement,"" Surkov said, referring to an area of Moscow in Peter the Great"s time that provided the spark for much of the tsar"s reforms.
The official said the government would likely choose a site near Moscow to create its hoped-for hothouse of technological innovation, but suggested that somewhere further afield, such as Vladivostok, was also an option,