Episode 122: Inside Russia’s Wartime Economy

In early June, President Putin took to the stage at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum – Russia's flagship annual showcase for investors and international media – and delivered a characteristically assured account of an economy not just surviving but adapting. Sanctions, he suggested, had been absorbed. Western predictions of collapse had amounted to little more than wishful thinking.

But if we look more closely at the current state of the Russian economy beyond the Kremlin narratives, the picture is more distorted. This is a classic war economy where growth is almost entirely a function of state defence orders, public spending has reached historically elevated levels, and the civilian economy is being systematically drained of labour, capital and technology to feed the military-industrial complex.

In this episode, Natia Seskuria, Senior Research Fellow, Russian and Eurasian Security, is joined by RUSI Associate Fellow Charles Hecker, to discuss Russia’s wartime economy and explore the following questions:

• What does the Russian wartime economy actually look like?
• As economic strain intensifies and the logic of state predation deepens, what are the implications for regime stability?
• If the conflict extends to another three to five years, how will Western corporate engagement with Russia evolve – and what risks does that trajectory create for sanctions coherence and Euro-Atlantic security?