Pak Sahafat – An English publication today, referring to the two-pronged strategy of the West in military support for Ukraine and economic pressure on Russia, wrote: The economy of the largest country in the world in terms of size has not only not been destroyed, but has also grown despite all the costs of the war.
According to Pak Sahafat News Agency, the report of The Spectator website states: When Russian tanks entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Western countries quickly adopted a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they did not enter into a direct military conflict with Russia, and at the same time, they supported Ukraine with weapons and other military equipment. This part of the strategy has been extremely successful.
It became clear that the second part of this strategy was ineffective, which was actually a plan of economic war with Moscow and applying an unprecedented financial shock to it. With sanctions and a general ban on imports and exports (except for humanitarian items such as medicine), Russia was supposed to be almost completely cut off from the world economy and impoverished enough to be forced to surrender.
Europe has paid a heavy price for the limited application of sanctions on Russian oil and gas. UK fossil fuel imports from Russia, which reached £4.5bn in 2021, fell to £1.3bn in the year to January 2023. In 2020, the European Union supplied 39% of its gas and 23% of its oil from Russia, and in the third quarter of last year, these imports decreased to 15% and 14%, respectively.
Read more:
American officials warned about underestimating Russia’s military power
As Russia’s oil and gas exports to Europe decreased, the country quickly increased its exports to China and India, which preferred to buy black gold at a discount rather than take a stand against an attack on Ukraine. Due to the increase in the number of ships moving Indian refined oil through the Suez Canal, it seems that some of the Russian oil exports are being re-sent to European markets.
Indirect exports are taking place in other forms as well, and research by the German newspaper Bild has revealed the growth of exports to Russia’s neighboring countries. For example, German vehicle exports to Kazakhstan increased by 507 percent between 2021 and 2022, and to Armenia by 761 percent. In the same period of time, the export of chemical products to Armenia has increased by 110% and to Kazakhstan by 129%. The export of electrical and computer equipment to Armenia has also increased by 343%.
The results of this miscalculation are obvious to everyone. In April last year, the International Monetary Fund predicted that Russia’s economy would shrink by 8.5 percent in 2022 and another 2.3 percent this year. It is now known that despite all the costs of the war in Ukraine, the country’s GDP decreased by only 2.1% last year, and this year the International Monetary Fund has predicted an increase of 0.7%.
The Russian economy is not only not destroyed, but its configuration has changed and its orientation has turned towards the East and South instead of the West.