At an economic conference in Vladivostok on September 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to claim that Western sanctions over the Ukraine war have failed to dent the Russian economy.
“Russia is coping with the economic, financial and technological aggression of the West … Estimates and forecasts of economic dynamics … are now much more optimistic than they were in early spring,” at the annual Eastern Economic Forum.
The statement is misleading. Thanks to a September 5 scoop from , we know that the actual impact could be “far more dire” than Putin and other Russian officials have publicly acknowledged.
Bloomberg based its assessment on review of a confidential report prepared for a closed-door meeting of Russian officials on August 30. Bloomberg said it confirmed the report’s authenticity.
The report outlines three scenarios that show Russian economic growth plunging as much as 12 percent through 2024. A middle-ground scenario predicts pre-sanctions economic activity won’t be achieved until late 2027.
Referring to sanctions, Bloomberg said:
Russia’s minister of economic development and other Russian economists tried to knock the report down.The minister, , told that the Russian economy is “coping adequately with the sanctions pressure” and dismissed the scenarios Bloomberg cited.
Perhaps, but Bloomberg noted that:
That view jibes with a highly negative academics that concluded the sanctions are “crippling” the Russian economy and .
A team of 42 researchers with Yale's Chief Executive Leadership Institute, including some in Russia and Eurasia, reviewed Putin’s responses to sanctions and didn’t give them a high grade, according to highlights:
It is true that Russia has been able to continue exporting oil, a factor that has lessened the impact of sanctions. Moreover, , agreeing to pay for gas and oil in rubles rather than dollars or euros.
An assessment by Reuters in late August for the six-month anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine found that the ruble had partly recovered from an initial, post-invasion collapse, and that inflation had lessened, as Putin noted in his remarks at Vladivostok.
Still, Russian consumers told Reuters they were feeling the heat: