Despite nine sets of sanctions imposed by the European Union, the Russian economy only experienced a small contraction of its GDP in 2022. The "resilience" of the Russian economy was hailed on Tuesday by President Vladimir Putin during his state of the nation address. However, certain Western observers and politicians point out blind spots in the official statistics provided by Moscow.
The Russian economy is resisting. Far from the "collapse" predicted by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire after the first waves of Western sanctions following the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow's GDP contracted by only 2.1% in 2022, according to the Russian statistics service Rosstat. The Russian economy is even projected to grow by 0.3% in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
