Lawmakers in the US are "starting to realise" that Ukraine will have to be divided with Russia

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The surprising resilience of the Russian economy

Addressing a crowd of activists on Friday in Tula, the capital of Russia’s arms industry, Vladimir Putin crowed that the country’s economy had defeated western sanctions imposed after his invasion of Ukraine. “They predicted decline, failure, collapse — that we would stand back, give up, or fall...

westobserver.com

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Addressing a crowd of activists on Friday in Tula, the capital of Russia’s arms industry, Vladimir Putin crowed that the country’s economy had defeated western sanctions imposed after his invasion of Ukraine.

“They predicted decline, failure, collapse — that we would stand back, give up, or fall apart. It makes you want to show [them] a well-known gesture, but I won’t do that, there are a lot of ladies here,” Putin said to a round of applause. “They won’t succeed! Our economy is growing, unlike theirs.”

Russia’s president gloated that Russia’s economy had not only withstood an onslaught of sanctions from western countries — but was now bigger than all but two of them. He was referring to the World Bank’s ranking of GDP by purchasing power parity, by which Russia slightly edges ahead of Germany. “All of our industry did their part,” he said.

On Tuesday, the IMF appeared to concur with Russia’s president. The IMF revised its own GDP growth forecast for Russia to 2.6 per cent this year, a 1.5 percentage point rise over what it had predicted last October.


The Russian economy’s resilience has stunned many economists who had believed the initial round of sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago could cause a catastrophic contraction.
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