Analysis of Russian Economic Resilience

But anybody who thinks this is gonna translate into an economic crisis

is smoking some very strong substance.

Let me just give you some more facts, sobering though they are.

So Russian military spending has roughly doubled

in the course of the war. It's north of seven percent of GDP.

Its deficit currently, or last year, stood at two point four percent of

GDP, two point five rather.

Its debt to GDP is a, a m- a mere fourteen percent.

This puts it in a fiscally stronger position than I think just about every

EU member state. A third of the state's revenues are from

oil and gas, which it continues to sell on global

markets through its

shadow fleet, despite all talk of sanctions.

The inflation rate is eight point seven percent.

But get this,

Russian real wages have risen twenty-two percent

since the war began. Unemployment

simply doesn't exist. Disposable income

is up forty-eight percent.

Retail sales are twenty-eight percent up.

Consumer sentiment in Russia today is at all-time highs.

The sanctions regime has failed utterly