• There are no signs of a economic collapse in Russia and it won’t come for a long time, Ukrainian strategist Andriy Klymenko said.
• He told Fakty that the uptick in weapons production has helped compensate for losses in GDP.
• It’s difficult to get an accurate picture of Russia’s economy currently with the government withholding some official data, Klymenko said.

Russia’s economy isn’t staring down an economic disaster, even though experts around the world had predicted as much after unprecedented sanctions followed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last February.

That’s according to Ukrainian strategist Andriy Klymenko, speaking in an interview with Ukrainian newspaper Fakty translated by Euromaidan Press. Klymenko — the head of the Ukrainian monitoring group at the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies — pointed out that economists have had to admit they were wrong in their predictions for a total collapse in Russia’s gross domestic product over the last year.

There’s been a decline in GDP of 8% due to sanctions, he said, but there’s been also a 5% positive gain thanks to Moscow’s wartime weapons production. 

“This compensated for the GDP losses from the sanctions,” Klymenko said, adding that the economy has also seen unemployment dip to its lowest point in years given that many citizens have joined the armed forces.

Klymenko noted that it’s likely that US, UK, and European economists are all working to get a clearer picture of the economy since data coming out of the Kremlin has run dry.

One possibility, too, he said, is that a significant chunk of Russian money remains in foreign companies or shadow funds, and some could be tied to oil companies. All of that adds to Klymenko’s doubts of any impending financial collapse in Russia.

To be sure, the war, sanctions, and shifting energy market dynamics have reshaped the world power as far as which nations it does business with, how much export revenue it pulls in, and the trade network it operates within.

While Russian oil has returned to pre-war levels, largely due to increased trade with India and China, the International Monetary Fund said in April that Moscow’s revenue is down about 43% compared to the same time last year. 

“Because Russia has closed almost all economic statistics, one will not find any figures for the last year today except for those fed to us by [finance minister] Siluanov and [central bank governor] Nabiullina,” Klymenko said. “So now the question really arises…how can we get an accurate picture of the Russian economy in this case? Perhaps we need to look for some other methods than the ones we are used to.”