As a Ukrainian at war since day 1 – I don't buy it. They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end. Military force is the only way to get them to the death zone.
> They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end.
Yes and no. There's a minimum price they need to sell it, and somewhere in between they may not actually make enough between the minimum and sale price to actually fund their military. Nevermind the awesome job you guys are doing blowing up refineries and other industrial facilities. It'll be good when Europe stops importing Russian gas and steps up their seizure of sanctioned ships too.
Sanctions can and will work against Russia. Part of the strain they face today is due to these sanctions, it just takes awhile and in the meantime, unfortunately, there are people dying.
As a strong supporter of Ukraine, I would say ultimately wars are won or lost by economic forces (the side that can't afford it any more loses). That's how the USSR lost the Cold War, and all I can hope is that all of Europe really has your back in this one.
As per Clausevitz, wars end either when you kill every last soldier or the ones who are still alive decide not to fight. I can't see the former happening. So it's about ratcheting the pain of continuing to something unbearable. To the level where Russia can't make enough cash selling resources to make more tanks and bombs and also feed people.
The issue is of course that Russians seem incredibly resilient against the latter. They seem happy when Russia wins another 5m^2 of territory even if materially they are massively affected.
But even then if Russia can no longer recruit "marginal" people and the alternative to peace is even larger losses, people might reassess.
The higher the economic cost in the meantime, the sooner this moment comes.
It’s very difficult to utterly destroy a country’s military force, particularly a country as huge as Russia, which has also a sizeable population. Ukraine cannot do it on its own and I see no appetite from anybody else to do it, so I think it is unlikely to happen.
Of course, it is also very difficult to utterly destroy a country’s economic power. Unfortunately, in Russia’s case, they have the raw materials and a population they can basically enslave. Hitting hard at refineries is a good strategy, it’s a weak point in the whole structure. Hopefully it’ll be enough.
Honestly, I don’t see an easy or clean way out of this. One possibility is that they’ll grind themselves badly enough to become completely irrelevant. Unfortunately that means a good chunk of Ukraine gets ground down along the way. One can hope for a coup, but then whatever comes after might well be worse.
Then, hopefully Ukraine can rebuild as a free nation.
As someone with no firsthand knowledge at all, I am inclined to believe your position is correct. But I also think the Economist is making an important point: Russia's continued prosecution of this war will shred their internal economy with consequences lasting for decades or centuries. What people often underestimate is just how much damage an economy can suffer before breaking down entirely.
But Putin doesn't care about that, so the war will continue until something changes militarily.
Thank you for your esteemed presence. I've got an unsatisfied hankering for kneeling since george Floyd died, but now that you're here, take that kneel.
The article is not as unrealistic as that, the author does point out that Putin is not just looking at the state of Russia, he’s also looking at the relative state of Ukraine and its support from the West.
The death zone isn’t the point at which they die, it’s the point at which they are consuming their own long term strength and capacity to recover in order to sustain their effort .
To our utter shame, we have never actually committed to Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat, but merely to tenuous Ukrainian survival. I firmly believe this war would already be over, or effectively so, if Ukraine’s allies had spent what we have up till now in the first 2 years. Even from a cynical financial point of view it would have been the better policy.
Also many westerns forget (or have no clue) that in ruzzian mindset suffering is one of the greatest virtues. The more you suffer - the better ruzzian you are.
By western standards ruzzian economy is in collapse, but their citizens are willing to endure anything beyond western imagination. Not to mention that even before 2022 apart from Moscow and Saint Petersburg there are many towns that are like timecapsules 50+ years into the past.
TL;DR: I will believe ruzzina state collapse/death when I will see it, but now I don't hold my breath.
> If your competitors are also weakening—and if you believe you can tolerate the pain longer than they can—the calculus flips. Economic pressure that should drive compromise instead reinforces the logic of persistence.
I think everyone underestimates just how much misery Russia, and Russian citizens, can endure.
I think the problem is that there is not much data presented in this article - or other articles of that kind.
Systems are resilient - until they are not, and exhibit sudden factures and fast collapse.
The question is not whether Russia collapses or not, but who would be making profit from such a scenario, and who is keen on keeping the current state of affairs.
They're certainly a fatalistic people. That's the real scary part about authoritarianism, people quit caring. They know their leaders are crooks and so on, that's just normal to many of them.
Is it so? They had changed form of government twice in less than a century. Not just head of state or ruling party, form of government. You assume that because their baseline is miserable they can tolerate a lot but there’s a big difference between living a miserable life unter a totalitarian regime barely affording basic necessities, and all the same but starving.
On top of that current Russia isn’t actually “suffering”, certainly nowhere near 90s levels. Cheap crap from Russia replaced Western produce and those with money can buy grey goods. Putin is doing a “good” job insulating general population from the war.
A "dead" centrally-planned economy can continue lurching forward like a zombie for a long, long time. No one should count on this ending the war any time soon.
I live in Dubai, UAE and I can see with my own eyes that the sanctions strategy doesn't work, here Russians buy whathever they like and send it to Russia. There are companies that do this. They hire workers from poor countries promising a good life here in Dubai and they send them in Ukraine to fight. To fight agains Russia we need to attack every nations that have deals with Russia. Let's sanction everyone who makes deals with Russia, let's really block everything that goes to Russia and then maybe the Russian economy with crash
I am not in Russia, but I have friends in Russia and visit Russia once a year or so.
From what I see there is no visible economy problems in Russia. Yes, there are some temporary issues in some areas, but generally it's resolved promptly.
There is some decrease of real salary/price increase, but not that significant. Probably situation in EU is worse.
It looks like economic block of Russian government is really professional and know what to do. It's not typical for government in Russia ;)
Also it helps that people are locked in country by western countries, so many stays in country and drives the economy.
How does Russia have $73 billion dollars worth of debt. Who is buying Russian treasuries? Also how did the GDP grow by 1% in 2025, is that a function of the internal Defence spending activity?
Obviously domestic investors. EU sanctions locked them on domestic market and with current macro indicators buying Russian debt is a no-brainer.
> Also how did the GDP grow by 1% in 2025, is that a function of the internal Defence spending activity?
Russia poured a lot of money in the economy, so it wasn’t just military spending. Generous payouts to families of killed and wounded soldiers did magic to local property markets. It also accelerated inflation, which pushed people to spend more. At the same time imports from the West dropped, only partially compensated by Chinese. Central bank had to raise interest rates multiple times targeting inflation and preventing economy from overheating. Now it started dropping the rates, taking into account that borrowing already suppressed and military spending is lower this year.
All true, but I remember several articles in the Economist in the first year warning that no collapse was imminent, and basically that the Russian central bank had plenty of options to recalibrate the economy in the medium term. They made comparisons with other countries that have been subject to similar, or even much more severe sanctions.
Overall I think they’ve been the best source of analysis on this I’ve found. They were explaining what CDOs and such were, and why they were a systemic risk years before the collapse in 2008.
So glad we don't have propaganda, only independent journalists who just coincidentally parrot the same think-tank talking points. See the wealth of articles that are even more obviously wrong predicting China's collapse.
Yes, it seems like that’s the propaganda. The free speech democratic West, instead of reporting about the objective truth, tells us half truths for their own benefit.
> It has entered what mountaineers call the death zone: the altitude above 8,000 metres at which the human body consumes itself faster than it can be repaired.
> Over the past four years the Russian economy has bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems... The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy.
> A recession is like fatigue: rest and you recover. Russia’s condition is like altitude sickness: the longer you stay, the worse it gets, regardless of rest.
> But Vladimir Putin is not only watching his own oxygen gauge. He is watching the other climbers.
Always a fan of the writing style the Economist promotes.
I found the metaphors / analogons rather disturbing e.g. metabolism, etc. Does the human body have a Chinese assistent with an oxigen tent at 8000 metres?
I wonder if the end of Russia as a world threat is something that benefits or hurts the US.
The US runs a trillion dollar war machine, a multi-trillion dollar military industrial complex. It needs to feed it. It needs enemies. At the very least, it needs a constant threat to justify its existence (even if it has to create those threats).
If Russia ceases to be a threat, does the US begin to hassle more countries? Does it increase the Police State, does domestic surveillance become more prevalent. Are we already seeing these things?
A legitimate Russian threat might actually be good for the world and the American people.
It’s interesting, of course, but for example the Ukrainian budget depends on donations for about 60%, yet this dump doesn’t seem to rush to publish articles with equally loud headlines about Ukraine. Or about the US with its trillions in debt, or the UK, France, and most EU countries with huge debts exceeding their annual GDP.
I would add that it's really unclear, IMO, what the real state of the Russian economy is.
The main focus is on GDP growth, which indeed has been reported as decent - maybe a bit of a wobble recently but no more.
So, first of all, that number is kind of unverifiable. Hostile journalists have been silenced, independent institutions shattered or kicked out. Their GDP number might be accurate, but might also be inflated, and we'd never know. Russia is notorious for manipulating information for propaganda reasons and frankly I can't see why they wouldn't inflate their GDP prints. China was far more open when people were questioning its GDP and even then it was tea leaf prophecies.
Moreover, with Putin's (and incidentally Trump's) approach of never retreating and always doubling down, I'd expect Russia would act like it's business as usual until pretty much the day it collapses. As with the Titan sub, there will be some awkward creaking sounds then in one instant it will all go.
For the final straw, even if the GDP number is 100% right, increasingly it is driven by military spending. GDP is essentially the sum total of money spent in a country. And Russia is increasingly spending that money not on healthcare, schools, police, infrastructure and investments, and instead on military hardware being sent straight to be destroyed in Ukraine. You can do this for a little bit but, as the article points out, not forever, and mere GDP growth is not much of a sign of a strong economy.
There's just so much we don't know: if the GDP is real, what Russian gold reserves look like (apparently raided - but how much?), how their oil companies are holding up having siphoned every last Rouble meant for maintenance off to cash. Russia also lost something like an estimated 1.25M men. If for a back-of-the-envelope we assume half of Russia's prewar population is participating in labour force, that's almost 2% of the workforce permanently lost. And their loss rate ain't dropping.
EDIT some more caveats:
- GDP captures the official economy. It is unclear what the impact on the unofficial economy is, I can imagine larger than on the regular economy (but could make the opposite argument too).
- Even if Russia is not fudhing the final number, the incentives on individual surveyed subjects align with those of pumping GDP, especially in time of crisis - lower costs, higher income.
Russia‘s international reserves are at all time high at the moment (800B$), of which only 300B are frozen by sanctions. Doesn’t look like a sign of a death zone. The arguments for it are questionable:
>Consider the arithmetics of descent for the Kremlin. Russia’s defence sector now accounts for around 8% of GDP. Demobilising without falling into a crisis would require five conditions to be met simultaneously: credible security guarantees that satisfy the Kremlin’s threat perceptions (which in turn will determine the extent to which it rebuilds its military capabilities);
Likely result of a peace deal. Trump wants to sign it and focus on China, so some pragmatic arrangement to be expected.
> mass demobilisation with effective retraining programmes;
The easiest part. The scale of mobilization was relatively small compared to total workforce. Not sure why effective retraining sounds like a problem.
>at least partial sanctions relief for technology access;
Russia has gaps in electronics (can buy from China) and in aviation (sanctions likely to be lifted in exchange for opening transit routes). In software it is still ahead of Europe, having strong national players in AI, banking, marketplaces etc. It may need Western tech to roll out 5G, but given that they already plan it, they probably already have access to Chinese tech.
>a revolution in defence procurement that prioritises efficiency over budget absorption;
Not clear why this is relevant. The defense spending will wind down gradually, it is likely already more efficient than before the war.
> and a healthy ecosystem of small and mid-size firms capable of absorbing reallocated resources and boosting innovation.
Will likely happen as soon as tax relief will be affordable, i.e. in 1 or 2 years after the peace deal. Resilience of Russian SMEs is something developed over decades. It might happen that Dubai and South Caucasus Russian tech hubs will go home. Most importantly, there will be a huge amount of money spent on new territories similarly to infrastructure investments in Crimea, which will add few percentage of growth to GDP.
> The probability of all five converging is near zero.
This is the most interesting part of the article, but it left unexplained. Why?
Same story for 4 years long. "Russian economy is at the brink of a collapse." Yet it Somehow just keeps ok going year after year.
The truth is that the sanctions are only hurting the Eurozone more than Russia. Small minority (EU or the political west) cannot force meaningful sanctions on much larger group (BRICS). Unfortunately this is not the narrative anyone can say out loud lest they be labeled as "Putin's trolls" so the wishy-washy keeps on going on.
How do you think sanctions work? Economy is not powered by electricity, it took 4 years to crack down on their shadow fleet, God knows how many more escape hatches they have. China and India, and now US support them.
Not that you aren't factually right with regards to all modern technology being funded thru MIC, but USSR/Russia had exactly the same kind of MIC and has miserably failed at converting it to something profitable in the past. No reason to expect anything different this time - it's probably even worse because every successful entrepreneur that wouldn't leave the country ends up in prison. That said, there isn't much of good news for Ukraine either, sadly. The fat man slims down but the thin one starves to death.
GUIs are weaponry that we point at one another? You seem to be captive to some overriding viewpoint, to the point that you can't actually evaluate reality.
There’s a decent article in the Economist right now warning of Brazilification in the west. A particular kind of debt fuelled economic death spiral on which Brazil is unfortunately a pioneer.
That is the very basis of our currency, and the basic idea is a good one in an idea-heavy economy more reliant on innovation than natural resource constraints. Also, if truly becomes too much we will just have one of the many many currency changes. My grandparents lived with about five (could be as many as seven) currencies throughout their (German) lives, for example.
As long as the real values remain, the factories, the people, the roads, the buildings, that is not a problem overall. It's not like people can emigrate to alien worlds, and on earth the places with the best real economy will be where they will go - have to go.
Money is the carrot dangled in front of us to keep us moving and to create real value things. The carrot can be updated and changed if the current one starts to lose its appeal, it is not what ultimately matters. The point of view of an individual and the big picture are very different things.
The only way is just to cede the land and move on. Keep the people alive. 100 years later one can renegotiate. This kind of copium hope wishing the economy collapse or something like Mongol collapse is just not practical. The longer this drag on, the lesser fertile men exist in Ukraine and the population recovery will take even longer while Russian outbirth in the long run. Sometime to win one has to abide by time. Joan or Arc and King Goujian of Yue demonstrated that principle well either by divine intervention or human vengeance. Russia is doing very well. You can check with your Russians or Northern China friends that see the conditions with their eyes and not western propaganda.
They don't just want land though. They want 'denazification' which means overthrowing the government and making it like Belarus or Bucha.
I think the way is to support Ukraine to win rather than the 'escalation management' of Biden or the taking bribes to pressure Ukraine to surrender of Trump.
They are not doing so badly recently. 200 sq km taken back last week.
So several sources report this. I assume this may be more "realistic"
than in the last 3 years ago or so.
My problem with this is that many of these "news media" have a certain
propaganda spin. Yes, Russia's propaganda puts any other propaganda
to shame, but that does not mean others don't use propaganda either.
The most prevalent change is how suddenly in Europe, more debt will
be made by upgrading arms. I am not saying this is not understandable,
so I am not necessarily against that; in fact, Europeans need a
nuclear arsenal under EU control anyway. But at the same time one
should not blindly adopt propaganda used by others. One always has
to look what happens to taxpayer's money or who finances something.
k_bx|12 days ago
ericmay|12 days ago
Yes and no. There's a minimum price they need to sell it, and somewhere in between they may not actually make enough between the minimum and sale price to actually fund their military. Nevermind the awesome job you guys are doing blowing up refineries and other industrial facilities. It'll be good when Europe stops importing Russian gas and steps up their seizure of sanctioned ships too.
Sanctions can and will work against Russia. Part of the strain they face today is due to these sanctions, it just takes awhile and in the meantime, unfortunately, there are people dying.
zh3|12 days ago
rich_sasha|11 days ago
As per Clausevitz, wars end either when you kill every last soldier or the ones who are still alive decide not to fight. I can't see the former happening. So it's about ratcheting the pain of continuing to something unbearable. To the level where Russia can't make enough cash selling resources to make more tanks and bombs and also feed people.
The issue is of course that Russians seem incredibly resilient against the latter. They seem happy when Russia wins another 5m^2 of territory even if materially they are massively affected.
But even then if Russia can no longer recruit "marginal" people and the alternative to peace is even larger losses, people might reassess.
The higher the economic cost in the meantime, the sooner this moment comes.
kergonath|12 days ago
Of course, it is also very difficult to utterly destroy a country’s economic power. Unfortunately, in Russia’s case, they have the raw materials and a population they can basically enslave. Hitting hard at refineries is a good strategy, it’s a weak point in the whole structure. Hopefully it’ll be enough.
Honestly, I don’t see an easy or clean way out of this. One possibility is that they’ll grind themselves badly enough to become completely irrelevant. Unfortunately that means a good chunk of Ukraine gets ground down along the way. One can hope for a coup, but then whatever comes after might well be worse.
Then, hopefully Ukraine can rebuild as a free nation.
vondur|12 days ago
chowells|12 days ago
But Putin doesn't care about that, so the war will continue until something changes militarily.
sourcegrift|12 days ago
simonh|12 days ago
The death zone isn’t the point at which they die, it’s the point at which they are consuming their own long term strength and capacity to recover in order to sustain their effort .
To our utter shame, we have never actually committed to Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat, but merely to tenuous Ukrainian survival. I firmly believe this war would already be over, or effectively so, if Ukraine’s allies had spent what we have up till now in the first 2 years. Even from a cynical financial point of view it would have been the better policy.
trymas|11 days ago
By western standards ruzzian economy is in collapse, but their citizens are willing to endure anything beyond western imagination. Not to mention that even before 2022 apart from Moscow and Saint Petersburg there are many towns that are like timecapsules 50+ years into the past.
TL;DR: I will believe ruzzina state collapse/death when I will see it, but now I don't hold my breath.
mdavid626|12 days ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin|12 days ago
I think everyone underestimates just how much misery Russia, and Russian citizens, can endure.
wuschel|12 days ago
Systems are resilient - until they are not, and exhibit sudden factures and fast collapse.
The question is not whether Russia collapses or not, but who would be making profit from such a scenario, and who is keen on keeping the current state of affairs.
duxup|12 days ago
pointlessone|11 days ago
general1465|12 days ago
wiseowise|12 days ago
nradov|12 days ago
francescomi|11 days ago
valcker|11 days ago
franktankbank|11 days ago
drysine|11 days ago
Really?
hcknwscommenter|12 days ago
temp483332|12 days ago
From what I see there is no visible economy problems in Russia. Yes, there are some temporary issues in some areas, but generally it's resolved promptly.
There is some decrease of real salary/price increase, but not that significant. Probably situation in EU is worse.
It looks like economic block of Russian government is really professional and know what to do. It's not typical for government in Russia ;)
Also it helps that people are locked in country by western countries, so many stays in country and drives the economy.
tim333|11 days ago
duxup|12 days ago
I'm skeptical how close they are to a dramatic change.
dh2022|12 days ago
dyauspitr|12 days ago
ivan_gammel|12 days ago
Obviously domestic investors. EU sanctions locked them on domestic market and with current macro indicators buying Russian debt is a no-brainer.
> Also how did the GDP grow by 1% in 2025, is that a function of the internal Defence spending activity?
Russia poured a lot of money in the economy, so it wasn’t just military spending. Generous payouts to families of killed and wounded soldiers did magic to local property markets. It also accelerated inflation, which pushed people to spend more. At the same time imports from the West dropped, only partially compensated by Chinese. Central bank had to raise interest rates multiple times targeting inflation and preventing economy from overheating. Now it started dropping the rates, taking into account that borrowing already suppressed and military spending is lower this year.
kaivi|12 days ago
Build tanks -> increase GDP
Send those tanks to burn with men inside -> increase GDP per capita
kergonath|12 days ago
Yes, pretty much. But even that peaked at some point in 2023 and is trending downwards now.
simonh|12 days ago
It looks like Russian bonds are largely bought by Middle Eastern based hedge funds and family funds or trusts.
tonymet|12 days ago
Since Crimea Invasion
Russia’s Economy Is On the Brink of Collapse" – CNN Business, December 2014.
"The End of the Putin Era? Russia’s Economy Is Tanking" – Newsweek, December 2014.
"Russia Heading for Economic 'Colossal Collapse'" – BBC News (quoting Alexei Kudrin), December 2014.
"How the Oil Price Collapse Could Topple Putin" – The Guardian, 2015.
"Russia’s Economy Is a Mess" – The Atlantic, February 2015.
"Russia’s Coming Economic Collapse" – Forbes, June 2015.
Since Ukraine War
Post-Ukraine Invasion (2022–Present)
"The Russian Economy Is Heading for a Meltdown" – The Economist, March 2022.
"Biden: The Ruble Is Reduced to Rubble" – Associated Press (reporting on White House statements), March 2022.
"Russia Faces its Worst Economic Collapse Since the Fall of the Soviet Union" – Bloomberg, April 2022.
"The Implosion of the Russian Economy" – Foreign Affairs, July 2022.
"Russia’s Economy Is Dying a Slow Death" – Business Insider, 2023.
"Is Russia’s Economy On the Brink of Collapse? Why Trump Might Be Right" – The Guardian, September 2025.
"Stormy Weather Pummels Russia's Economy: Cracks Are Appearing" – CEPA, February 2026.
"The Russian Economy Is Finally Stagnating" – The Guardian, February 2026.
simonh|12 days ago
Overall I think they’ve been the best source of analysis on this I’ve found. They were explaining what CDOs and such were, and why they were a systemic risk years before the collapse in 2008.
nikkwong|12 days ago
It does look like the war is taking it's toll, though. It is said that the annual growth in GDP is expected to be negative for 2026.
svara|12 days ago
elektronika|12 days ago
mdavid626|12 days ago
jackschultz|12 days ago
Edit for the good metaphors.
> It has entered what mountaineers call the death zone: the altitude above 8,000 metres at which the human body consumes itself faster than it can be repaired.
> Over the past four years the Russian economy has bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems... The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy.
> A recession is like fatigue: rest and you recover. Russia’s condition is like altitude sickness: the longer you stay, the worse it gets, regardless of rest.
> But Vladimir Putin is not only watching his own oxygen gauge. He is watching the other climbers.
Always a fan of the writing style the Economist promotes.
wuschel|12 days ago
O1111OOO|12 days ago
The US runs a trillion dollar war machine, a multi-trillion dollar military industrial complex. It needs to feed it. It needs enemies. At the very least, it needs a constant threat to justify its existence (even if it has to create those threats).
If Russia ceases to be a threat, does the US begin to hassle more countries? Does it increase the Police State, does domestic surveillance become more prevalent. Are we already seeing these things?
A legitimate Russian threat might actually be good for the world and the American people.
tim333|11 days ago
zombot|11 days ago
The US is great at creating its own threats. In addition, marketing chops are top tier, and Hollywood is always glad to help.
sigmonsays|12 days ago
tclover|12 days ago
rich_sasha|11 days ago
The main focus is on GDP growth, which indeed has been reported as decent - maybe a bit of a wobble recently but no more.
So, first of all, that number is kind of unverifiable. Hostile journalists have been silenced, independent institutions shattered or kicked out. Their GDP number might be accurate, but might also be inflated, and we'd never know. Russia is notorious for manipulating information for propaganda reasons and frankly I can't see why they wouldn't inflate their GDP prints. China was far more open when people were questioning its GDP and even then it was tea leaf prophecies.
Moreover, with Putin's (and incidentally Trump's) approach of never retreating and always doubling down, I'd expect Russia would act like it's business as usual until pretty much the day it collapses. As with the Titan sub, there will be some awkward creaking sounds then in one instant it will all go.
For the final straw, even if the GDP number is 100% right, increasingly it is driven by military spending. GDP is essentially the sum total of money spent in a country. And Russia is increasingly spending that money not on healthcare, schools, police, infrastructure and investments, and instead on military hardware being sent straight to be destroyed in Ukraine. You can do this for a little bit but, as the article points out, not forever, and mere GDP growth is not much of a sign of a strong economy.
There's just so much we don't know: if the GDP is real, what Russian gold reserves look like (apparently raided - but how much?), how their oil companies are holding up having siphoned every last Rouble meant for maintenance off to cash. Russia also lost something like an estimated 1.25M men. If for a back-of-the-envelope we assume half of Russia's prewar population is participating in labour force, that's almost 2% of the workforce permanently lost. And their loss rate ain't dropping.
EDIT some more caveats:
- GDP captures the official economy. It is unclear what the impact on the unofficial economy is, I can imagine larger than on the regular economy (but could make the opposite argument too).
- Even if Russia is not fudhing the final number, the incentives on individual surveyed subjects align with those of pumping GDP, especially in time of crisis - lower costs, higher income.
ivan_gammel|12 days ago
>Consider the arithmetics of descent for the Kremlin. Russia’s defence sector now accounts for around 8% of GDP. Demobilising without falling into a crisis would require five conditions to be met simultaneously: credible security guarantees that satisfy the Kremlin’s threat perceptions (which in turn will determine the extent to which it rebuilds its military capabilities);
Likely result of a peace deal. Trump wants to sign it and focus on China, so some pragmatic arrangement to be expected.
> mass demobilisation with effective retraining programmes;
The easiest part. The scale of mobilization was relatively small compared to total workforce. Not sure why effective retraining sounds like a problem.
>at least partial sanctions relief for technology access;
Russia has gaps in electronics (can buy from China) and in aviation (sanctions likely to be lifted in exchange for opening transit routes). In software it is still ahead of Europe, having strong national players in AI, banking, marketplaces etc. It may need Western tech to roll out 5G, but given that they already plan it, they probably already have access to Chinese tech.
>a revolution in defence procurement that prioritises efficiency over budget absorption;
Not clear why this is relevant. The defense spending will wind down gradually, it is likely already more efficient than before the war.
> and a healthy ecosystem of small and mid-size firms capable of absorbing reallocated resources and boosting innovation.
Will likely happen as soon as tax relief will be affordable, i.e. in 1 or 2 years after the peace deal. Resilience of Russian SMEs is something developed over decades. It might happen that Dubai and South Caucasus Russian tech hubs will go home. Most importantly, there will be a huge amount of money spent on new territories similarly to infrastructure investments in Crimea, which will add few percentage of growth to GDP.
> The probability of all five converging is near zero.
This is the most interesting part of the article, but it left unexplained. Why?
samiv|12 days ago
The truth is that the sanctions are only hurting the Eurozone more than Russia. Small minority (EU or the political west) cannot force meaningful sanctions on much larger group (BRICS). Unfortunately this is not the narrative anyone can say out loud lest they be labeled as "Putin's trolls" so the wishy-washy keeps on going on.
wiseowise|12 days ago
gzread|12 days ago
krautburglar|12 days ago
[deleted]
tliltocatl|12 days ago
AnimalMuppet|12 days ago
lovegrenoble|12 days ago
[deleted]
mdavid626|12 days ago
Debt. The Bubble.
Is that sustainable? I don’t think so.
What’s the point of the article? To prove the west’s superiority?
konart|12 days ago
simonh|12 days ago
Krasnol|12 days ago
So what's the point of the comment? Your fear that it might be superior?
nosianu|12 days ago
That is the very basis of our currency, and the basic idea is a good one in an idea-heavy economy more reliant on innovation than natural resource constraints. Also, if truly becomes too much we will just have one of the many many currency changes. My grandparents lived with about five (could be as many as seven) currencies throughout their (German) lives, for example.
As long as the real values remain, the factories, the people, the roads, the buildings, that is not a problem overall. It's not like people can emigrate to alien worlds, and on earth the places with the best real economy will be where they will go - have to go.
Money is the carrot dangled in front of us to keep us moving and to create real value things. The carrot can be updated and changed if the current one starts to lose its appeal, it is not what ultimately matters. The point of view of an individual and the big picture are very different things.
Haven880|12 days ago
TiredOfLife|11 days ago
tim333|11 days ago
I think the way is to support Ukraine to win rather than the 'escalation management' of Biden or the taking bribes to pressure Ukraine to surrender of Trump.
They are not doing so badly recently. 200 sq km taken back last week.
shevy-java|12 days ago
My problem with this is that many of these "news media" have a certain propaganda spin. Yes, Russia's propaganda puts any other propaganda to shame, but that does not mean others don't use propaganda either. The most prevalent change is how suddenly in Europe, more debt will be made by upgrading arms. I am not saying this is not understandable, so I am not necessarily against that; in fact, Europeans need a nuclear arsenal under EU control anyway. But at the same time one should not blindly adopt propaganda used by others. One always has to look what happens to taxpayer's money or who finances something.