Is Russia's Economy Finally Breaking Down? - Silicon Curtain

[TexasTowelie]

Edition No170 | 27-06-2025 - Today we're diving deep into growing trouble inside Russia’s war economy. Kremlin officials still speak of resilience and momentum. The war machine continues to crank out lethal munitions to add to the pile of trauma and scrap metal in Ukraine. But scratch the surface, and the cracks are hard to ignore. Let’s dive in.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it’s become the most sanctioned nation on Earth. Yet, against all odds, its economy has shown a defiant resilience, based on certain metrics. According to official Russian figures, growth in 2024 outpaced all G7 nations. The economy expanded 4.3%, compared with just 1.1% in the UK and 2.8% in the US. But firstly. Official Russian bank figures have become increasingly questionable through the course of the war, and that growth is driven almost entirely by record-breaking military spending. There is the potential that this spending has also built up a huge off-books financial risk, or debt bubble. Just as the war is not politically or militarily rational, in a classical Western analysis, it turns out to neither be economically rational. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the state of the economy has been secondary to the goal of winning the war against Ukraine. That is the Kremlin's overarching priority.