Economist Nikolaev assessed the economic losses and gains of Moscow over the past two and a half years
Western ex-partners, now enemies, wanted to put a spoke in the wheels of the Russian economy, but with their sanctions they ruined their same trade balance. Over the past two years, unfriendly countries have lost almost 21 trillion rubles in Russian goods. Meanwhile, during the same time, Moscow redirected export flows to other addresses and even benefited from this.
Over the two years of sanctions, importers from unfriendly countries received less Russian goods by $256.5 billion (almost 21 trillion rubles). At the same time, Russia was able to redirect goods worth this amount to other states and even received a benefit of 5 trillion rubles. Such calculations were published by RIA Novosti on the basis of open data.
That is, the economic sanctions of the West, unprecedented in their scale, designed to bring our economy to its knees, actually brought it considerable profit. Is this really possible? Chief researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Economics Igor Nikolaev believes that the results of the study can be considered objective, but still there is some one-sidedness in them.
“Let’s restore the sequence of events,” the expert suggests. “In 2022, sanctions against the Russian energy sector will be announced. Why was the focus not only on the defense-industrial complex, but also on the energy and raw materials sector? In order to reduce federal budget revenues. Russia is a large, prominent player in the global energy market. The market naturally perceived the restrictions as a challenge. However, as a result, we had record export revenue, then prices went down. That is, in this regard, Russia has clearly gained more than it has lost. But what will happen next, time will tell. This is geopolitics. I think those who imposed the sanctions were also aware that there would be economic costs for everyone.
-As you know, the EU has just adopted the 14th package of sanctions, therefore the foreign economic price situation is already different, in terms of export revenues. Russia, naturally, is already quite far from the indicators that it had in 2022 and its foreign trade balance does not look as convincing as it did then. Another thing is how the situation develops with exports, with the market situation, with prices on the world market. But most importantly: sanctions pressure continues.
-Yes, these were the results of the first stage and we can agree with them. But how the situation will develop further from the point of view of exports and imports — as they say, we'll see. The data published by our agency does not reflect the whole picture, but only the beginning of this whole sanctions story. They provide figures based on data from customs officials for 2022-2023. But the situation is changing, so these data should be regarded as fair, but only intermediate.
— Of course. Russia had active cooperation with countries that subsequently imposed sanctions. But the fact is that the West, like Moscow, was able to replace some of the losses. Other suppliers took the place of Russia, which means that imports from other countries began. It turns out that both sides are undergoing substitution at the same time. It would be impossible to do otherwise. Russia, in particular, has largely redirected supplies to Southeast Asian markets. And here we must pay tribute to both domestic business and government policy, which relied on this redirection. For this reason, the Russian economy, which fell slightly in 2022, showed noticeable growth in 2023. It turns out that the Russian economy, in terms of the formation of new export logistics, has shown very good results, as evidenced by objective indicators. The redirection of export flows has taken place, this is a fact.
-We can definitely say that the situation in our country now is not as good as in 2022. Both in terms of exports and imports — although there is no sharp deterioration. I believe that compared to 2023, the situation will not be much different. Not in the other direction.