President Vladimir Putin’s remarks at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) indicated that Russia has fully returned to its 2014-2021 trajectory of economic and social development, Kommersant writes.
Essentially, the President said that the events of 2022-2023 had had no bearing on the county’s economic and social development priorities. He expressed his vision of its further progress in the same vein, adding that any new policies should be seen as a logical continuation of the programs implemented in the 2010s.
According to Vladimir Putin, none of the 2022 trends was critical – neither Russia’s high military spending, nor the different foreign trade conditions, nor the withdrawal of external corporate investors from the market.
According to economist Sergei Khestanov, Associate Professor at RANEPA, the experience of the late Soviet period suggests that, as long as the state has enough resources to maintain a minimum standard of living acceptable for the population, there will be no real changes.
“The change in the former USSR was triggered by a drop in oil and gas revenues by about three quarters. And even after that, the regime had enough inertia to last another five years. So far, they have fallen only by half,” the expert says.