{"id":41801,"date":"2025-08-03T21:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T21:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/41801\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T21:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T21:53:09","slug":"putin-unfazed-as-his-economy-holds-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/41801\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin unfazed as his economy holds up"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Kremlin claims to be unfazed by Donald Trump\u2019s new ceasefire deadline, and with good reason: though dangerously overheated by the war machine and western sanctions, Russia\u2019s economy is far from collapse.<\/p>\n

Sanctions are putting pressure on the rouble and dragging down economic growth as a boom driven by massive military spending comes to an end. They have also hit Russia\u2019s oil and gas revenues: they made up about 30% of the federal budget last year, and dropped by a third this spring. The country\u2019s oil exports remain stable by volume \u2013 albeit at lower prices.<\/p>\n

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Growth is falling. In 2024 the economy grew by 4.3%, according to the state statistics agency Rosstat, up from 3.6% in 2023. But in the first quarter of 2025 growth had dropped to 1.4% and is predicted to level out at an annual growth figure of 1.6%. In June, Russia\u2019s economy minister, Maxim Reshetnikov, said the country was \u201con the brink of a recession\u201d.<\/p>\n

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded its forecast for the Russian economy even further. In its July World Economic Outlook Update, the IMF predicts Russia\u2019s gross domestic product (GDP) will rise just 0.9% in 2025, down from its 1.5% projection in April. The downturn was attributed to recent data suggesting a drop in retail sales and industrial production.<\/p>\n

The gloomy predictions have forced Russian officials to acknowledge the economic hit caused by the war in Ukraine and sanctions, particularly those restricting Russia\u2019s access to foreign markets and technology, that have affected the finance and energy sectors hardest. Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Russian Central Bank, was even gloomier, saying the resources that had stoked growth in wartime \u2013 defying sanctions and pouring money into military contracts \u2013 had been \u201ctruly exhausted\u201d.<\/p>\n

The official inflation figure is about 10%, although independent analysts suggest it could be more than 15%. But even having constrained Russia\u2019s economy, existing sanctions haven\u2019t triggered collapse. Until now, Trump has not added new sanctions to those imposed on Russia by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s economy is war-driven and state-controlled. Further sanctions might weaken it \u2013 or force the state to invent other ways of evading sanctions. Some Republicans think Putin can\u2019t go on dodging the sanction squeeze for ever. He seems determined to prove them wrong.<\/p>\n

Photograph by Dado Galdieri\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kremlin claims to be unfazed by Donald Trump\u2019s new ceasefire deadline, and with good reason: though dangerously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-41801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}