well, from the horses mouth today... feel free to debunk it by all means i will wait.

the moscow times

The resources that allowed the Russian economy to show growth for two years under conditions of war and sanctions have been exhausted, the head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday.

"We have been growing at a fairly high rate for two years because free resources were used," she said. According to Nabiullina, this concerns the workforce, production capacity, capital reserves of the banking system, as well as money from the National Welfare Fund, with the help of which the government has been patching up "holes" in the budget and paying for trillion-dollar mega-projects.

"We need to understand that many of these resources have really been exhausted," Nabiullina said (she is quoted by TASS). The unemployment rate, according to Rosstat, has dropped to a historical minimum of 2.3%, and mass emigration and the drafting of men for the war have created a shortage of personnel, which the government estimates at 2 million people.

According to Rosstat, the level of capacity utilization at enterprises exceeded 80%, which became a record in modern history. The liquid assets of the National Welfare Fund have decreased threefold since the beginning of the war — to 2.8 trillion rubles. The currency reserves in the fund have decreased to 153.7 billion yuan — the minimum since its creation in 2008, and the gold reserves of the National Welfare Fund have shrunk to 139.5 tons, although before the start of the war they exceeded 400 tons. The fund may be completely depleted in 2026, warned RANEPA experts.

The Russian economy is "on the brink of recession", said Maxim Oreshkin, head of the Ministry of Economic Development, at the SPIEF session with Nabiullina. According to Rosstat, in the first quarter, the GDP growth rate slowed threefold — from 4.1% to 1.4%, and quarter to quarter, the economy began to shrink for the first time since 2022.

Business profits fell by a third in March, and by half in the key oil and gas sector. Industry was on the verge of stagnation (1.2% growth in January–April), and civilian industries began to shrink. Retail turnover slowed by three times — 2.4% at the end of April versus 7.2% at the end of December.

In fact, officials from the economic bloc are telling Vladimir Putin that it is time to choose between war and the economy, the head of one of the Russian expert centers told Novaya Gazeta.Europe. “These kinds of voices will become louder and louder,” the expert is sure. “They will speak in Aesopian language that we can no longer afford the expenses, the National Welfare Fund is running out, and there is nowhere to replenish it from.”

After three years of military mobilization, the Russian economy is cooling, says Alexander Kolyandr, a research fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “The economy is running out of steam, and the downturn could easily turn into a collapse,” he warns. “Bad decisions by officials, a further fall in oil prices, carelessness with inflation — and Russia could find itself in big trouble.”

Posted By: Tombs, Jun 19, 21:31:28