Alexander Kolyandr is a researcher for the Centre for European Policy Analysis specialising in the Russian economy and politics. Previously he was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and a banker for Credit Suisse. He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and lives in London.
Vladimir Putin likes good statistics. At a government meeting on 15 April, even as he acknowledged that growth was slowing, he pointed proudly to Russia’s unemployment rate: 2.1 per cent, a record low. Proof, he suggested, that the economy remains fundamentally sound despite everything the West has thrown at it. The Russian president would do
The head of Swedish military intelligence has dropped what he clearly regards as a bombshell. Thomas Nilsson told the Financial Times this week that Russia’s economy is far weaker than it appears, that the Kremlin systematically manipulates its statistics to fool Ukraine’s Western allies, and that the central bank is understating inflation, which he believes is closer
Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Viktor Orbán is not just political earthquake for Hungary. It is Moscow’s worst result in the European Union since the war began. Orbán served Russia in a way no overt ally could. He was never Putin’s puppet – he was something far more useful: a democratically elected, Brussels-based veto-wielder who
From our UK edition
Apart from windfall revenues from higher oil and gas prices and the political leverage that comes from supplying the Global South with fertilisers, how much sanctions relief can Russia also expect amid the war in the Middle East? Some relief is already here. On 12 March, the United States amended its sanctions on Russian oil tankers
Every drone Ukraine fires at a Russian oil terminal is meant to defund Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Right now, each one may be doing the opposite. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil export infrastructure are intended to starve Moscow of the budget revenues that fund its war machine. The logic is straightforward: disrupt exports, reduce revenues,
Of all the parties watching the chaos in the Middle East unfold, one should be rubbing its hands together with particular satisfaction. Russia has not fired a shot in this conflict, lost no allies it cannot afford to lose, and has so far gained rather a lot, with more to come. A cynic might call
From our UK edition
After losing his erstwhile allies and clients in Syria and Venezuela over the past 13 months, Vladimir Putin ought to be breathing a sigh of relief at the bloody suppression of the protests in Iran. Russia and Iran are natural bedfellows – a marriage of inconvenience, if you will. Both languish under Western sanctions, though
From our UK edition
The next year will be challenging for Russia. Yes, we’ve heard this for almost four years. We’ve been told that the Russian economy is about to collapse under Western sanctions and the cost of war, yet it stumbles on. There may be no breadlines or toilet paper shortages, but the bill for the Kremlin’s past
From our UK edition
We will wage the war in Ukraine for longer and make you pay more for it. That was the message the Kremlin sent its subjects following the Russian government’s presentation of next year’s budget and the accompanying economic outlook. The budget, which reached parliament for rubber-stamping on Monday, outlines the Kremlin’s vision ahead of the
From our UK edition
The Alaska summit taking place today isn’t just about war – economics looms equally large. Vladimir Putin, with his forces pressing forward in Ukraine, faces neither military urgency nor economic desperation to halt the fighting. For him, this has never been a territorial grab but an existential struggle against Western hegemony. His challenge is to
From our UK edition
The Kremlin’s accountants are having a problem: Russia’s state budget, once the engine of spectacular growth, is now flashing red. The mathematics are brutal. Russia’s fiscal deficit has ballooned to 3.7 trillion rubles in June – roughly £34 billion – skating perilously close to this year’s legal limit. As a share of GDP, the deficit threatens
From our UK edition
Moscow’s response to the latest ultimatum issued by Donald Trump last week has been to deploy that most Russian of diplomatic weapons: contemptuous laughter. The US president’s threat to impose draconian sanctions unless Putin ends his invasion of Ukraine within fifty days has been met with the kind of theatrical disdain that would make Chekhov proud. Foreign
From our UK edition
The remarkable resurgence the Russian economy has experienced since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is losing momentum. Where once Putin could boast about 4.3 per cent growth rates for two years in a row – thumbing his nose at Western sanctions with all the aplomb of a man who’d discovered alchemy – the numbers now
From our UK edition
Trade between Russia and China is no longer booming as it was immediately after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago. In 2024, annual trade between the two was up 1.9 per cent from the previous year to $240 billion (£182 billion). But in the first four months of 2025, it fell 7.5 per
From our UK edition
When Donald Trump unveiled his table of tariffs in Washington last week, there was one country that was conspicuously absent from his list: Russia. The White House’s argument was that there was no point slapping tariffs on trade with Moscow because the existing sanctions in place against it meant there was negligible bilateral trade going
From our UK edition
Just hours after the US announced last week that it had reached an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to stop the conflict in the Black Sea, Moscow presented its conditions for this partial truce. Moscow said it would comply with the truce only when these stipulations are met. This list of demands Russia presented to
From our UK edition
Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, there has been a great deal of temptation to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen in the West. There is, after all, an urgent need and moral imperative to make the aggressor pay and use Russia’s money for Ukraine’s cause. But the reality is that
From our UK edition
Markets are rife with rumours of impending talks between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on a ceasefire for the war in Ukraine. Even before Trump told the New York Post last week that he had spoken with Putin over the telephone and that the Russian president wanted to end the war, stock market traders
From our UK edition
Russia’s ruble is in trouble. The currency has plunged to its lowest rate against the dollar since the weeks after the outbreak of war against Ukraine. On Wednesday, the ruble hit 110 against the dollar for the first time since 16 March 2022. The currency has recovered slightly, to 108 against the dollar this morning,
From our UK edition
The Central Bank of Russia raised its benchmark rate to a twenty-year high of 21 per cent on Friday – and has indicated that it could go even higher. Even Vladimir Putin, a notorious serial boaster, won’t be caught bragging about this tell-tale sign of a not-so-healthy economy. The writing is on the wall: Russia
