Russia survives economic crisis with no major losses: Medvedev

MOSCOW, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia has survived the global economic crisis at "a relatively low price."

Summing up the outgoing year in a live broadcast on state television, Medvedev said this year was extremely difficult and many dramatic events had occurred.

"We have survived and are continuing to develop. In my opinion, we have paid a relatively low price for the international financial and economic crisis," he said.

He predicted that the Russian economy would expand 2.5-5 percent next year.

"We hope our economy will resume growth next year. The extent is so far hard to predict, but analysts estimate it to be 2.5-5 percent, in an optimistic scenario," he said.

Medvedev warned that recovery from the crisis would be a fairly slow process, noting that Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk by 8.7 percent "or perhaps a little more" this year.

He described the maintenance of social stability as one of his major achievements in 2009.

"We have maintained social stability. We have ensured the set of social payments that we promised, and not a single social obligation was terminated," he said.

Russia, whose economy is heavily dependent on energy resources, was hard hit by the global economic downturn as oil prices collapsed late last year. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin predicted early this month that Russia's GDP would contract by 8.5 to 8.7 percent this year.