Veronika Prokhorenko17:16, 16.03.23

The Russian leader launched into excuses to the business elite within the framework of the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin once again tried to distort the reality of Russians and invented famine in the West. Earlier it became known that he was looking for a “scapegoat” to justify his failure in Ukraine .

In particular, the dictator tried to convince Russian business that he actually did not suffer from the sanctions on March 16 as part of the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, writes The Moscow Times .

At the meeting, Putin said that the West “fell into a hole” when it imposed sanctions against Russia. Because of this, according to the dictator, they faced a clear shortage of food and even refused some food.

“They prophesied us a depression and a decline in the consumer sector, they promised empty store shelves, a massive shortage of goods, a failure of the service sector. However, life decreed otherwise. Western countries themselves faced the same problems in full growth,” Putin said.

At the same time, the Russian leader said that the level of the Russian economy, on the contrary, has been recording a “good increase” in domestic demand since July 2022.

“Already in April, we will reach a retail trade growth rate of at least five percent, and in real terms,” ​​Putin said.

It is worth noting that Putin voiced such “favorable” forecasts to the richest people in Russia, who lost $67 billion due to sanctions during the year of full-scale war in Ukraine. If before February 24, 2022 their total capital reached $339 billion, now it has “blown away” by 20%. 

The Russian economy is “deflated” under the pressure of sanctions

Recall that last week it became known that the Russian economy is no longer able to contain the effect of sanctions.

In a new study by the KSE Institute, analysts stated that during the year of the war with Ukraine, the reserves of the Russian Federation – ended – such an unprecedented number of sanctions were imposed on the country that any new “strike” could finally break this “house of cards”.

In the future, Russian exports may be reduced by another $70 billion, which will lead to an increase in the budget deficit to 8-9% of GDP.

At the moment,  Putin has money left to maintain his military machine and economy until the summer , says political strategist Boris Tizenhausen. According to him, the West is quite capable of forcing the dictator to end the war in Ukraine with new sanctions.

(C)UNIAN 2023