The chorus of voices claiming the Russian economy has proven vastly more resilient than expected is growing. Even former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria have wrongly despaired over the inefficacy of Western sanctions on Russia.
The implications are equally disturbing–that unprecedented U.S.-led sanctions don’t work. Following on the IMF’s latest assessment that the Russian economy shrank by a less-than-expected -2.2% in 2022, many of these commentators point to the IMF’s projection of fractionally positive economic growth in Russia of +0.3% in 2023, outstripping Germany and the U.K., as evidence that the economic pressure campaign against Russia has failed.
