THE public accounts from the Russia they should be dead according to many European economists, yet the reality of the facts is different. Even the Corriere della Sera, with an article by Federico Fubini, had to admit: Moscow's economy is not doing badly at all. In other words: sanctions are worse for us than for them. Despite some signs of difficulty – just think of Gazpromthe public gas monopoly, which presented its first loss-making annual accounts for at least a quarter of a century – signs of strength in the Russian economy and budget prevail, a great victory for Vladimir Putin.
THE numbers they leave no room for interpretation: the come in oil and gas alone account for almost half of the state's revenue and in the first three months of the year they were 79% above the levels of a year ago. But other revenues also grew – by 24 percent to be precise – so much so that the Russian government seems on course to end the year with a deficit below 1 percent of their product, numbers that we Europeans can only dream of. Suffice it to say that the International Monetary Fund had predicted a collapse of almost 11 percent in Russian GDP over a two-year period.
Contributing to this result was the “external” market to the EU, with China in the forefront. Beijing together with India and Turkey has filled the void left by Western countries in trade. Data in hand: in 2022 the Russian economy contracted by 2%, while in 2023 there was a 3% growth in GDP. As regards the weight of global exports, a recent European analysis recorded a decline from 1.39% in the 2017-2019 period to 1.17% in the two years of war. Exports from the EU went from 4 to 1.4 percent, but those from China went from 2 to 3 percent. Deviated trades and evaded sanctions, the recipe that allowed Moscow to hold its own.
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