the President of RussiaVladimir Putin said this Monday (18) that the West’s “lightning war” with the sanctions policy against his country due to the invasion of Ukraine failed because, in his opinion, the Russian economy is stabilizing while European living standards are falling.
The West’s calculus is “quickly affecting the financial and economic situation of our country, provoking panic on the markets, the collapse of the banking system, a mass shortage of products in stores,” said the President at a meeting with government officials economic situation of the country.
“We can already say with certainty that such a policy towards Russia has failed. The economic blitzkrieg strategy has failed,” he said.
The President argued that the sanctions had an impact on the countries that prompted them, in the form of “increase in inflation and unemployment, deterioration in economic momentum in the US and European countries, decline in the living standards of Europeans, devaluation of their economies”.
“Russia has resisted this unprecedented pressure. The situation is stabilizing, the ruble exchange rate has returned to the level of the first half of February and is determined by an objectively strong balance of payments,” he analyzed.
According to Putin, the current account surplus exceeded $58 billion in the first quarter, “an alltime high”.
As Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine, the ruble plummeted nearly 30% against the dollar and euro, a decline not seen since at least 1993 and 1994.
According to Putin, “inflation is now also stabilizing”, although consumer prices have risen by 9.4% in just a month and a half and are at 17.5% yearonyear since April 8.
In addition, “foreign currencies are returning to the country’s banking system and the volume of deposits from citizens is growing” by 1.6% in the first ten days of April, Governor of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina said on Monday.
The Russian president also said that the number of unemployed is relatively low, a statement that argued with good indicators of the use of electricity generation.
According to data released by the federal statistics agency Rosstat on March 30, unemployment in Russia fell to 4.1% in February from 4.4% in January, the lowest level since 1991, although data for that month are not yet available International companies provided ceased operations in the country or exited the Russian market due to western sanctions.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on Monday that up to 200,000 people could lose their jobs in the capital alone as a result of the closure of foreign companies.
At the end of March, Sobyanin announced that around 300 international companies had ceased operations in the Russian capital.
Regarding consumption, the Kremlin boss said: “After a brief boom in various products, and that happens all the time in such situations, retail demand has returned to normal.”