Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken to gloating about Russia’s resistance to international sanctions and its supposed economic resilience, despite the best efforts of the United States and its G7 partners to choke off Moscow’s oil revenues and starve it of military technology.
Scoffing at Europe’s economies, Putin said at a recent event: “We have growth, and they have decline… They all have problems through the roof, not even comparable to our problems.”
It’s true that, as the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, the Russian state is earning billions from oil and diamond exports, its military factories are working flat out, and many Russian banks can still access the international financial system.
Russia has adapted to the wide range of sanctions imposed by Western nations. Far from buckling under their weight, the Russian economy is in fact 1% larger than it was on the eve of the invasion.
But the longer-term outlook is far less rosy. War is distorting the economy and sucking resources into military production at an unsustainable pace.
I hope so, it just feels so bleak now after everything was looking semi-promising for the past two years (Ukraine successes outnumbered Russia successes). Maybe alot of that was just Ukranian propaganda, but it feels like over the past two months or so the general momentum of the war has turned somewhat against Ukraine. You’ve got US support held up by
Russia’s 5th columnthe GOP and you’ve got Russia launching a massive sustained assault across all fronts. Hopefully it ends up working against Russia and they burn themselves out and get opened up to a counter-attack, but after two years of constant battle reports from Ukraine, it feels like there’s a noticeable decline in good news from the front.That’s to be expected, defensive war is always easier than an offensive one. And Ukraine switched from defensive to offensive.