These clowns thought that Coca-Cola, McDonalds and H&M leaving Russia would shutdown the Russian economy.
Naive pontification.
Don’t Trust Russia’s Numbers
Moscow has made economic statistics a central part of its information war.
By
Agathe Demarais, the global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit
.
MARCH 13, 2023, 6:00 AM
Why do so many people in the West—who should probably know better by now—trust the data of authoritarian governments conducting an information war?
The
latest controversy surrounds the state of the Russian economy and what Western media and others have been reporting to their audiences. Read anything about the war in Ukraine these days, and you’ll probably find a mention that the Russian economy contracted by about
2 percent in 2022—a low decline that suggests little more than a mild recession. That number has entered the policy debate: For some, the low figure is proof that the Russian economy is resilient and sanctions do not work. Others use the same figure to argue that sanctions are starting to bite and Western countries should double down. These opposing arguments have one thing in common: They rely on a largely meaningless number.
Even if Russia’s reported GDP decline were truthful, it is clear that three factors artificially boosted the Russian growth number in 2022. First, the economic growth figure has been fueled by Russia’s turbocharged production of military gear. Producing tanks and missiles does not improve living standards, however, and this part of Russian GDP will quickly be destroyed on the battlefield. Second, Russia’s export earnings jumped in 2022 because of the war-induced spike in energy prices. And third, Western embargos on technology and other goods as well as sinking Russian consumer demand led to a plunge in imports, which dropped by almost 10 percent during 2022, according to Russia’s official data.
Even more important than what Russia’s “growth” really means, however, is the fact that the Kremlin’s figures cannot be trusted. That’s because Russia has made statistics a central part of its information war. Moscow’s goal is clear: to argue that sanctions do not work, thereby undercutting those who think they are a key tool to stop or contain Russia’s aggression against Ukraine (as I have
argued in
Foreign Policy). This strategy rests on three pillars. The Kremlin communicates heavily using cherry-picked forecasts, presenting them as facts and forgetting to mention that they are massively outside expert consensus. Moscow also delays the release of statistics that don’t fit its narrative. Finally, the figures it does release are of dubious quality—and frequently revised later.
A three hour tour. 
