Over the past year, the Russian economy has contracted by just 2.1%, despite forecasts that it will plunge into a deep recession. The decisive support factor was, of course, high prices for goods and mainly for energy products, which largely neutralized the impact of EU sanctions. and USA.

The picture emerges from preliminary estimates released yesterday by the Federal State Statistics Service and is clearly better than the recent 3% recession forecast even by Russian officials. After all, these are far from the extreme forecasts that some Western economists made when the first sanctions were imposed on Russia – they talked about a 10% drop in Russian GDP. Analysts show, however, that trade was hit hardest in both the wholesale and retail sectors. At the opposite end are mining, agriculture, construction and government spending, which have risen significantly over the past year.

It should be noted that since the beginning of the war, Russian oil companies have recorded the largest mining operation they have carried out in more than a decade. Moreover, all indications are that the withdrawal of Western companies from the sector has had little effect on mining activity.

Commenting on this, Dmitry Polevoy, an economist at Loko Bank, emphasized that “this is a good result, but it concerns what has already happened, and now the future is important.” As he explained, he believes that the factors fueling expectations and optimism about the rapid recovery of the Russian economy are not enough. By the way, he emphasized that the base scenario of his bank for the current year provides for another recession, albeit a very small one, in the order of a reduction in Russia’s GDP by 1-2%.

For its part, the Bank of Russia continues to expect the Russian economy to return to positive growth rates during the year. However, Bloomberg Economics estimates that the Russian economy will lose $190 billion of GDP by 2026, compared to pre-war levels and the picture it would have been had the war never started. Moscow is invading Ukraine.