One year into the Russia-Ukraine war, Gallup's Editor-in-Chief Mohamed Younis shares how the Russian people feel about their country's economy after sanctions from 33 nations.
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Pollster reveals how Russians are feeling about their economy
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The facts put out by Russia are false because there’s no participation in the world market. Have a good look at the cities outside of the capital and the living conditions of older folks is just disgusting with no heat or food as volunteers travel to these places once a month. There are many videos showing the conditions in which they live. Regarding the mass exodus of businesses from Russia many people were left with no jobs. The facts showed in this segment are not the real picture. How many men have fled, how many men have died. The picture is not as rosy as portrayed here. This is just a false narrative.
Objection about your title said that Ukraine conflict. It was not conflict but war. Ukraine’s war didn’t conflict of border or agreement so CNN used conflict. It was war and Ukraine was fighting to defend Ukraine’s independence and territorial souvereignty. Ukraine and Russia are equal, Ukraine isn’t a part of Russia Federation but independent and souvereignty state.
I recommend to all US consumers, check the source or ‘made in’ label on all products and chose any other source than the ‘Made in China’ products.
@Todd Howard Yes, we are, because it’s cheaper. You can buy Chinese shoes for 30 dollars that wear out completely in two months (not an exaggeration), or you can pay 150 dollars for US shoes which will last at least a year, probably more. So which is cheaper?
Ok and that can’t change at the drop a dime, we can always switch to Taiwan full time like some stuff already says and open factories there or bring everything home and have it made here and be fully self sufficient like we should be anyway… Next…. 🤡🤡🤡🤡
But, but, but I’ll never be able to shop at WalMart again. 😵💫😊😵💫😁
@Martin Chitembo . Who knows what the Chinese put in Iphones that no one knows about…
Tooth brushes to oil filters from brands you know guess what? Yup.
GUM & Wix made in China I wasn’t thrilled
Who ever fall for the myth that Russias economy is not suffering should know.
A) 700 000 Russians in working age has left Russia, 250 000 has died or been so wounded that they can not work or serve. Close to 500 000 has been drafted into the army. This more than 1,4 million that no longer work.
B) Income from gas and oil sales has gone down with 40% compared to February last year. This has lead to Russia now decreasing oil production and gas production. Russia today sell their gas and oil at half the price compared to for one year ago.
C) Russias car industry used to produce 1,7 million cars every year, this year they are expected to produce 600 000 new cars.
The rest of Russias industry is at best produce 65% procent of what they produced last year. The only sector that has improved is the veapon industry, hower that sector suffers from a shortage of western electronics.
D) The 1000 companies no longer at the market has had an even larger impact than stated in this program.
E) 2,8 million refugees have araved some unwillingly and some villingly. All of them in need of housing.
In short the Russian has hard times and no area is doing better than last year, you may or may not belive in the Russian propaganda, I sugest you use your brain and draw your own conclusions.
FYI in support of your stats
Oil production comparisons; namely, to extract 1 barrel:
Russia $45
Saudies $22
Most OPEC $20 – $25
Russia also must pay an additional $10 – $12 to ship to China and India, who pay discounted prices. And with no pipelines, shipping takes a month or more. So Putin is barely at a break-even point.
Also: The idea that their ruble is strong against the dollar is one of Putin’s best successes at propaganda. It’s not an exchange traded currency, so you cannot match it up against any currency. It’s frozen and cannot be exchanged or traded. The ruble has value only in Russian territory, making it effectively worthless.
I’m sure Russians are weighing the repercussions of a response before giving one.
I am Russian and we have a great economy compared to Europe ,we will be behind Putin and he has been a great leader, He is much better and more popularand liked then your president Biden
Absolutely!
Lots of countries have sent non Mitary aid..Mexico sent trucks,, and others have sent aid..everyone doesn’t have to send guns
Lots of people have volunteered to fight in the volunteer Ukrainian force. Even some from Venezuela.
They need military aid though… listen to Zelenskyy. Pretty shameful to not help a country that’s being threatened existentially
It doesn’t make sense, because of those interviewed. Did they answer under duress or because of optimistic perception ?
War injects a huge stimulus into the affected economies through government military spending. It is only when the destruction significantly exceeds the spending stimulus that things turn south. In the case of this war there is relatively little destruction on Russian soil, the destruction costs so far are being borne by Ukraine.
Yes. My ammo and body-bag business is booming – but I do miss my sons…
In the near future Russia is screwed. They are burning through their savings. When they run out by the end of the year they are hosed. And military equipment they have been collecting since the 1960’s is going up in spoke. Their military is being completely degraded. It will take a generation for Russia to recover, if they ever do.
Most possibly the countries that abstained will be easily blackmailed by Russia should all Ukrainian grain and wheat production fall in Russian hands.
If you can be arrested for calling Putin’s war a “war” in Russia, I’m extremely skeptical of any polling of Russians.
@John Muthan
“Alexei Gorinov was sentenced to 7 years for calling the war a war at a meeting” (Newsweek, Dec. 22, 2022)
“(March 23, 2022): In the three days after the law’s adoption on March 4, Russian authorities opened at least 60 cases on the administrative offense of “discrediting Russian armed forces,” the vast majority against peaceful anti-war protesters. By March 23, at least six criminal cases had been opened for “false information” about Russian armed forces’ actions, at least three of which involved aggravated charges.”
@John Muthan20,000 people last year alone
@peterhaslund or you are just regurgitating/vomiting American propaganda without looking at reality?
@peterhaslundboth ?
You are a liar…) You are probably a Ukrainian troll… No one in Russia has been arrested for calling the war a war… This is a war against NATO and Russia will win this war…
Going forward the western aid should take into consideration who didn’t support Ukraine
That map was interesting with countries providing support. Proud that Australia ($700m including 90 armoured fighting vehicles) and New Zealand obscured by the banner at bottom right as usual! ($15m and further offer offer of military equipment) have stepped up as usual with our allies.
Australian/Kiwi cuz
My friend is riding a Bushmaster, i promise you, he love it, way more secure than the old Soviet pos they had before.
@Stig Petersen Bloody brilliant to hear mate. We’re all thinking of him and you down here at the other end of the world. Here’s to a victorious Ukraine with our help. ❤
@kimbal dunsmore well the name checks out! Sounds Aussie to me!
Public sentiment in Russia is moderated by the consequences if you step out of line. That said, the Russian economy has proven to be very resilient to the sanctions imposed, but how long it can continue to be is the real question. Many of the consequences of current sanctions will have an impact for decades – not just a year, so they are cumulative. At the moment sanctions are hitting Russian high tech weapons manufacturing hard and that alone is good reason to say they are a success.
I have been to Russia on business for more than 20 years, tens and tens of times, travelling to more than 20 cities, and know of hundreds of friends there. I also speak Russian. I hardly know one person who supports this conflict, and their lives from an economic viewpoint is an absolute disaster. Layoffs, businesses closing, salaries unpaid, lack of goods, reductions in pay, lack of machinery parts, vehicle parts, inflation often locally on a massive scale, and above all, total shock, dismay, worry and stress about what’s happening in their lives, and without hope for the future. One company I know has lost 50% of its software engineers and will be closed in weeks. There are hundreds of such examples.
To say it’s unaffected is nonsense and a compete joke to report such a thing.
https://youtu.be/QU0resswOds An interview with Prof Sonnenberg on DW news.
If you bought a car, a new Iphone, a new laptop a year or two ago, it will work fine for a other few years. But gradually som more and more devices will break. And there won’t be enough available spareparts, and to few new cars and iphones.
Russia will end up in a post apocalyptic economy
@Joel Roher Why is the population more optimistic? I think it’s clear Russia prepared for this conflict and the possibility of sanctions for a decade by building up its financial reserves. I think it’s spending those reserves to smooth over the problems in the economy. A very large part of the Russian population is paid by the government and using that money they can keep people employed even if they do little or nothing.
One difficulty is that Russia stopped supplying a lot of economic data in March of last year so it’s really hard to accurately understand the true state of the Russian economy. The data that the IMF, eg, used to predict a 0.3% GDP growth in 2023 relies entirely on what the Russian government tells them. Russia lies about everything so the economic data it provides is suspect – you need to look at other verifiable indicators. The value of the ruble is not one of them since it is no longer a freely traded currency. You need to look at things like VAT collection (down 40%), the auto industry (down 90%) and so on, revenues from oil and gas (down a lot after sanction began to be imposed in December). Those paint a picture of an economy hit fairly hard. I would also rely on people’s outlook like this poll which seems to show that people are ok with the impact so far. But maybe the right question for them is how many are doing useful work in their jobs compared to a year ago.
I’m quite skeptical that the Russian population, in majority at least, don’t support the war. It seems like those who now oppose it don’t oppose it because it was not the wrong thing to do but rather that the cost to Russia is too high. Russian propaganda likes to frame it in terms of nazis in control of Ukraine and NATO troops now fighting directly with the Russian army (the Ukrainian army has been wiped out you see). Non-nazi ukrainians are russians and welcome being reabsorbed. This seems to me to have resonated in the Russian population. If you listen to the interviews with captured Russian soldiers online, they all seem to believe facets of these propagandic talking points.
There have been some clever polls taken on the Russian population to measure support for the war. Knowing that the population may feel afraid to answer directly, they instead asked indirect questions. The particular poll I am thinking about was taken months ago (maybe before the mobilization) and it seemed to show 70% support for the war.
So I am curious whether the people you talk to actually represent more than a small slice of the Russian population.
You r 100% spot on here. Unemployment will continue to explode in Russia. No investment. No jobs. No nothing. AND ITS GUNNA GET SO MUCH WORSE YOU KNOW IM CORRECT HERE ?? Russia is in a complete free fall
Most of those places in the Global South, with the exception of a few Middle East countries, have no trade turnover with Russia. So their opinions don’t have much effect on Russia’s well-being.
I used to live in Russia and still talk regularly to Russians. My friends are all university educated, speak foreign languages and many have traveled, studied, or worked in the West. They are mostly very pessimistic but resigned to the fact that they have few options. For the first six months they were hopeful that all this would eventually blow over. Now they accept that all this, the bad economy and government repression are permanent. Intelligent Russians know the country is in trouble. But most Russians are brain dead. They will believe what is on TV over what they can see with their own eyes. And Russians tend to tell pollsters the government approved answer. The Russian state is cracking down on all dissenters so telling a stranger what you really think is unwise.
The government has been burning through the sovereign wealth fund and gold and foreign currency reserves. That has shielded many from the worst effects. But you can only spend your savings once. The deficit for January 2023 was 60% of the deficit they had budgeted for the whole year. Energy revenues for January 2023 were 36% lower that January 2022. Because of the war, spending is up about 30% and revenue is plummeting. VAT tax collections in January 2023 were down 44% over January 2022. VAT collections are a very good proxy for measuring economic activity.
About half of Russian government revenue comes from energy. Sanctions on Russian energy did not start to kick in until December 5, 2022. That was the embargo on crude. The embargo on refined products kicked in on February 5, 2023. So the screws have just begun to turn. But Russian manufacturing, which was never much, has completely collapsed. For all practical purposes, no cars are being made in Russia. Component embargoes from the West have ground most manufacturing to a halt and led to massive layoffs or employees having greatly reduces hours.
Many in the West take the statistics coming out of Rosstat at face value. They shouldn’t. They are totally fabricated. There is no way that the economy contracted only 3% in 2022. And it is foolish to pay attention to the exchange rate on the ruble. It is no longer an exchange traded currency. The exchange rate is set by fiat. And Russians cannot buy foreign currency so there is just a complete absense of market transactions. Same thing with the stock exchange. The only reason it hasn’t gone to zero is because foreigners cannot sell their holdings. For all practical purposes the market is frozen.
And it really doesn’t matter what Russians say their perception of the economy is. When the savings accounts run dry, which is likely by the end of the year, there will be massive cuts in salaries and pensions. The vast majority of Russians, especially in the countryside count on government payments. When those stop, an already impoverished country will become even more so. If Russians are in actuality optimistic about the economy, it is only because they are stupid.
Well said. I think you got it exactly right.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing”
I’m proud that my country (Australia) has stood up but dismayed that so many countries have chosen not too. I was raised to confront bullies, not just ignore them.
@Sonomacats India has to fend off its own bully, the CCP, largely with Russian weapons, though, so it makes sense for them to be careful.
@Sonomacats Agree 100%. And we in Australia need to look out with clarity….just because some nation likes cricket doesn’t mean they are our friends. Meantime my respect for much of Eastern Europe has increased, and my faith in our major regional ally – Japan – remains rock solid.
@Sonomacats doesn’t help. They don’t support the effort because they have their own problems or oligarchs ruling, led by a mercenary autocrat who doesn’t care and just takes money for their interests from wherever, including Russia, like our prior president, Mr. Trump. Germans are protesting helping Ukraine in the war. They of all people should realize Russia is acting like Nazis and they will be Coming for you next.
Well, go and get laid, because your country the USA is the most impudent hooligan… Russia is trying to stop this hooligan…
@SonomacatsChina, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa, Iran will pay something to the US…? You are funny… It is more likely that the USA and its colonies, such as the EU, Australia and Canada, will suffer very much…
I have personal online contact with longtime friends in Russia. I’m told directly by them that no Russian is so stupid as to complain or denigrate the economic situation in a poll. I am told each week of the shortage of goods and the escalation of prices in food. Many have resorted to growing vegetable gardens, again, to supplement what food purchases they can make. I’m told that the polls are done, if they aren’t fake, in large cities where historically the foods were sent for higher prices. Does anyone even think that Russia would reveal it’s true circumstance.
A good reason to hold the government to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
They were probably scared shitless to say anything other than “everything is wonderful”
Every country looks at it’s own interest…just like the US does….actually those that abstained or did not show up to vote….are saying we don’t want to be involved…i support ukraine yes…but the same people turns away immigrants if they black or Indian.
@Kayenbey, I have been to Ukraine 15 times. I have dearly loved ones in Ukraine who are terrified day and night when the air raid sirens are sounding at 02:00 in the morning. The Russian population has supported their leader to attack and decimate the sovereign country of Ukraine twice. I’m having a difficult time feeling any sympathy for the Russian people and their government.