The draft law on counter-sanctions will be substantially revised. In particular, by the first reading in the State Duma, the text will remove the indication of industries whose products may be subject to embargo. To this decision the deputies came on the basis of the expert discussion held within the Council for Legislature under the leadership of the Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin. Now the document will not mention, in particular, that American drugs may be banned. It was assumed that the refusal to import drugs that have domestic counterparts would not have a negative impact on Russian patients. However, it turned out that both patients and their attending physicians doubt very much about the quality of a number of domestic medicines. In this regard, Vyacheslav Volodin criticized the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. He drew attention to the fact that tests of ready-made medicines against rare - isolated diseases last for many years, as a result people suffer: "The questions are purely bureaucratic, when the same clinical trials of drugs that have already shown themselves around the world are delayed, for this, citizens can not get medications that are available in other countries ". In addition, these delays force patients to use imported drugs, which are very expensive. "For this reason, the same orphan diseases can not be provided by drugs within the limits of the budgetary resources. The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation is responsible for this, "the speaker of the lower house of parliament. According to Volodin, the Ministry of Health would be useful to take on the experience of other countries. "Look at the experience of France: they are not allowed to enter the market by US companies, but they decided to provide high-quality affordable medicines for their production and other countries, formed this market competitively," the speaker explained his idea. "We need to create a competitive environment in Russia, so that the best companies from Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, India come here," he urged.. Volodin pointed out that the issue of creating a competitive domestic drug market will now be on the special control of the State Duma. The draft law "On measures of influence (counteraction) on unfriendly actions of the United States and (or) other foreign states" was presented by Volodin together with the leaders of all parliamentary factions on April 13, 2018. The document grants the Russian government the authority to impose a ban on the import and export of goods and services in respect of countries that behave aggressively towards Russia.

Following the results of the expert discussion of the document, it was also decided to include in its text an item on supporting domestic industries and enterprises that fall under Western sanctions. As Volodin noted, taking retaliatory measures, the country "will insure and support domestic enterprises". In general, the first reading received about 80 amendments to the provisions concerning measures and forms of implementing the bill, according to the website of the State Duma. The bill is scheduled for May 15.