By Sultan Musayev | 2025-11-26

A human-sized robot with a matte silver frame shuffled onto a spotlit Moscow stage to triumphant music -- then promptly fell over.

Aidol, billed as Russia's first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered anthropomorphic robot, wobbled toward the crowd during a November presentation, waved awkwardly and collapsed, setting off a storm of memes and mockery across social media.

"Who taught the first Russian robot to walk? Local alcoholics?" one Threads user wrote.

Aidol was developed by the New Technological Coalition (NTC), a new IT industry grouping. After the debacle, the robot's creators blamed "underinvestment" in mobility and poor lighting that they said disrupted its stereo cameras.

Aidol's manufacturer, also called Aidol, maintains that the machine can work offline for six hours, move at 6 km/h (about 3.7 mph), lift up to 10 kg (22 pounds) and display emotional expressions during interactions.

Ambitious goals and challenges

The humiliating rollout came at an awkward moment for the Kremlin. Last summer, President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to help Russia break into the world's top 25 countries by robot density, with a goal of installing more than 100,000 robots based on domestic technology.

"Russia certainly has this capability," he said at the time.

NTC formed earlier this year, uniting companies such as Promobot, W-Expo, Aidol and Robot Corporation, along with several universities. The coalition has invested at least $5 million in anthropomorphic robotics and plans to raise up to $50 million more by 2026 from private investors and "friendly" foreign countries. The aim is to deploy new humanoids across manufacturing, medicine, logistics and retail.

But many observers say Aidol's flop has weakened NTC's pitch. The incident revived longstanding questions about the state of Russian innovation, which critics argue lags far behind China and the United States.

Nurlan Bekmagambetov, a young entrepreneur from Astana who develops IT projects at the Astana Hub, told Kontur that he believes Russian tech progress is often more rhetorical than real.

"Funds are allocated, reports are written, but in the end, we see funny demos with robots," he said.

He argued that corruption and international isolation remain decisive obstacles.

"When funding is simply stolen, the country is cut off from modern technology and international partners, top specialists leave in droves, and technological breakthroughs are unlikely," he said.

Svitlana Lebedenko, a researcher at the European University Institute in Italy, attributed the stagnation to what she calls a "mismatch of the innovation cycle."

In a published study, she wrote that government R&D funding is used inefficiently, universities produce research disconnected from industry needs and companies show little appetite for innovation.

The Russian state has poured substantial money into the sector. From 2010 to 2023, the government allocated about 200 billion RUB (roughly $2.1 billion) to the Skolkovo Innovation Center, marketed as Russia's answer to Silicon Valley.

Officials say Skolkovo has since returned that sum in tax revenue, but the overall cost to the state remains steep. Over the same period, the ruble's value dropped by about two-thirds, eroding the real impact of the investment.

Even with this support, results remain underwhelming.

In the Global Innovation Index 2025, Russia fell from 45th to 60th place since 2021. Its score for "innovation inputs" -- the institutions and conditions that enable new technologies -- plunged from 43rd to 73rd. "Outputs," the actual products and technologies that result, also declined.

Forced domestic innovations

Meanwhile, domestic companies continue releasing products that fail to resonate.

Max, a messenger app launched in March by VK, a state-aligned firm, received a tepid public response. Users cited its unfinished interface, small user base and fears over surveillance.

"It's a spy program that monitors everything you write and say and can send this information to intelligence agencies," Vyacheslav Kudryavtsev, an IT specialist from Orenburg, told Kontur. "Thank you, but no."

Authorities have been unwilling to take no for an answer.

In August, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin ordered Max to be preinstalled on all electronic devices sold in Russia. State agencies and many private employers have since pressured workers to switch to the app, even as WhatsApp and Telegram face blocks inside the country.

The government is applying similar pressure on businesses. By 2028, companies that fail to transition to Russian-made software will face fines under a plan by the Ministry of Digital Development.

Bekmagambetov said the broader environment leaves little room for optimism. Russian IT companies, he argued, "don't have a bright future." Innovation requires "ideas, connections, competition and freedom -- all of which are currently almost nonexistent in Russia."