Rosy IMF forecasts and "Russian economy is doing fine" articles are based on official Russian stats that are literally made up. Western analysts are unable to fathom that some guy could just type figures into Excel and present them as official numbers. That everything is a lie without any shame or without any anchoring to truth, even if remotely. No, sir. We're standing next to an open reactor, but it's 3.6 roentgen because the party says so.<p>This is nothing new for Russia. No reliable stats (contemporary nor reconstructions) exist for the USSR either, because they were fudged so hard at that no-one knows the truth anymore. How many tons of milk were produced in 1970? Individual farms fudged their production numbers, districts did too, as did states and the central ministry in Moscow to fill quotas and announce hitting 5-year-plan targets in 3 years and earn bonuses.<p>In 2023, the goal is to show that sanctions don't work at all and damage the west more than they do Russia, so please remove the sanctions.
To me, the economic aspect was always secondary. The main point was to give Ukraine enough strength to protect themselves, and this strategy is working reasonably well, i.e. Ukraine regained a lot of their territories and Putin's troops are unable to make much progress.<p>As for the economic aspect, the ideas expressed in the article are just someone's fantasy. Russia is a huge country with a large amount of various supplies. There is no way to expect a collapse of the country in a short timeline. What is happening is a gradual process: talent drain, further population decline etc. But many people, at least those whose families are not touched by the draft, live more or less as before. And they will live like this for a few years, maybe not even noticing the gap increasing again between Russia and the West.