A few weeks ago I was watching a German reporter visiting part of his wife's family in the Russian far North, places where in the winter the thermometer is often below -50c. He was asking pointed questions about how the Ukraine war was affecting them directly, and their answer was that they were mostly unaffected. Moreover, some products (such as lubrication oil) that had disappeared during the early days of the war were back on the shelves.
this seemingly unimportant piece of social news just went in the back of my head, and I assumed that things in Russia were hard but not that hard. But thinking further it would seem to be some type of error. First, the lubricant was from Shell, a company that has stopped supplying Russia for nine months now, moreover, lubricants are not high-tech stuff. So in terms of soft propaganda, it would seem to show that things are normal-ish in Russia which is consistent with the Russian government's statement that GDP was down 2% in 2022.
Because of my current job, I have access to some IMF raw data, not in great depth, but I have some access, and the funny thing is that the IMF reported that Russia's GDP was down 2% in 2022, and Putin was expecting a GDP upswing in 2023 -- this projection was confirmed by the IMF (and the world bank). One small problem, the data doesn't confirm this...Since March 2022, Russia no longer shares its GDP data with IMF/WB just the headline number. Therefore, the truth about Russian GDP is what Putin says!
In 2022 more than 1,000 companies "voluntarily" left Russia, and I m not joking here there was no law forcing them to leave Russia, they just decided that they didn't want to be involved in the country anymore.
We know that Russian automobile production is down, some say that since May of 2022, automobile plants have been repurposed because too many necessary components are unavailable -- sourced from the west.
The truth is the first thing to disappear during a conflict. It suits Putin to say that Russia's economy has been unaffected by the departure of 1,000 western companies, that's his right, but it also shows how desperate the government of Putin is to show that everything is normal. In reality, it is far from normal.
Comments