is the Russian economy holding up as hard as the Kremlin suggests?

Vladimir Putin has been repeating it for several months, Western sanctions against the Russian economy are useless and even counterproductive. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the European Union has banned the purchase of Russian oil or even exchanges with several Russian banks. However, the Russian economy seems to be holding up. According to the IMF, the country would have experienced only a “moderate” recession in 2022, with a 2.2% drop in GDP. This idea of ​​a resilient economy has been widely publicized, but can we really trust these figures?

Inaccessible data and manipulated statistics

In reality, many data are inaccessible and were classified as “secret defense” at the beginning of the war. This concerns, among other things, data on foreign trade, monthly data on oil or gas or those related to the reserves of the Russian central bank. “Not giving access to this data (…) is a way for the Kremlin to complicate the task of economists, especially Western ones, who will want to make an objective diagnosis”says Agathe Demairals, director of global forecasts for Economist Intelligence United.
Second problem, is the data that remains public reliable? Rostat, the official Russian statistics body, has reportedly already been under pressure to change these figures and some official statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. Moreover, the manipulation of statistics is an integral part of the Russian communication strategy. Saying that the Russian economy is holding up well against sanctions therefore seems complicated, given the lack of reliable information available to economists.