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Making Sense of Russia’s War Economy
Despite the apparent resilience of Russia's economy, Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war against Ukraine comes at a high economic cost. Not only does it require today’s Russians to live a worse life than they otherwise would have done; it also condemns future generations to the same.
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CHICAGO – Two and a half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian economy seems like a riddle wrapped in an enigma of competing narratives. If you want to argue that the economy has been hobbled by Western sanctions, by the Kremlin’s prioritizing of military spending over everything else, and by successful Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, you can find plenty of evidence to support your view. But if you want to highlight the Russian economy’s resilience by pointing to domestic businesses’ adaptability or consumers’ ability to substitute domestic copycats for imported products, your argument cannot be easily dismissed.