How US Sanctions Made Russia the Fastest Growing Economy in Europe

Western media is finally waking up to the fact that Western sanctions against Russia have been a complete failure and the latest economic data coming out Russia is so shocking; it will change everything you know about the Russia and Ukraine War. Last week, the Financial Times broke a story entitled “The Surprising Resilience of the Russian Economy”

This article is a game changer, because for the past two years our media has only preached one consistent message. Russia is losing, Russia will be defeated, Russia is standing on its last leg. But economic data doesn’t lie and Russia’s economic growth in 2023 surpassed that of all G7 countries.

What’s even more incredible is Russia’s economy is now projected to continue this trend throughout 2024! 

This without a doubt is one of the most significant economic stories of the century, a miscalculation by Western nations so large that it is systematically changing how the entire world perceives the United States world led order.

If you don’t believe me just look at Tucker Carlson, one of America’s most well-known journalists who left Fox News last year and launched his own media brand on X, the former Twitter. Tucker Carlson flew to Moscow this week to conduct a one-on-one interview with Putin and allow the American public an insight into the other side of the war. As Tucker addressed his followers live from the streets of Moscow, he gave a powerful opening monologue that spoke so much truth, but here is the part of his speech that was truly remarkable:

Let’s go back in time to early 2022 when French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire proudly declared:

“We’re waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia. We will cause the collapse of the Russian economy.” 

That interview went live on French radio March 1, 2022 and was filled with amazing passion and emotion. The French Minister had to be passionate, he was selling a new war to his fellow EU citizens, and they needed to be convinced that the US, the EU, and its allies would be able to crush Russia and help Ukraine immediately win this war.

But wars are never won with emotion, and most Western leaders were far too emotional in their response. They were eager to see Russia’s economy collapse and if things went their way, maybe even force a regime change and get rid of Putin. But here we are two years later and Russia’s economic growth in 2023 surpassed that of all G7 countries and what’s even more embarrassing is that Russia quadrupled France’s growth rate in 2023! France’s economist minister couldn’t have been more wrong in his assessment, and this is preciously what I mean when wars aren’t won with emotion. 

Addressing a crowd of activists on Friday in Tula, the capital of Russia’s arms industry, Vladamir Putin proudly declared that Russia has emerged victorious against Western sanctions. He went on to state:

“They predicted decline, failure, collapse – that we would have to stand back, give up, or fall apart. It makes you want to show them a well-known gesture, but I don’t want to do that, there are a lot of ladies in here. Our economy is growing unlike theirs!”

It’s certainly a bold statement from the Russian President but Western media has now been forced to abandon this emotional thinking and is facing the harsh reality that Russia’s economy is in fact much stronger than before. The World Bank confirmed this with its latest report ranking Russia’s GDP as measured by Purchase Power Parity ahead of Germany, the engine of Europe’s economy.

The International Monetary Fund confirmed Putin’s statements about the Russian economy when it revised its own GDP forecast for Russia to 2.6% this year a full 1.5 percentage point raise over what it predicted last October.

But this raises two major questions…how did Russia achieve this? And how did the West fail to see this coming? The answer begins in 2014 when the war between Russia and Ukraine actually began. At the time US Senator Lindsay Graham stated: 

“Putin, who has an economy the size of Italy, is playing a poker game with a pair of twos and winning.” 

By comparing the Russian economy to Italy, the US Senator is basically telling the collective West, don’t worry about Russia, their economy is too small to do anything. We don’t need to worry about them.

Here is another great example, an article from Forbes, published in 2018, asking: Which has the Bigger Economy: Texas or Russia?

Articles like this are fluff pieces designed to inflate the American egos of Forbes readers. When you actually break down the size of Russia’s economy using purchasing power parity, the Russian economy is the 5^th largest in the world. But more importantly, the bulk of Russia’s economy comes from sectors vital to the global economy, including many important commodities.

For example, while Russia is not the largest producer of oil in the world, it is actually the largest exporter of oil, exporting even more oil globally than Saudi Arabia! Russia is also major global player in wheat, nickel, platinum and even frozen fish! 

But now Russia is directing a third of the country’s budget, some 14 trillion Rubles in 2024, towards the war effort, a threefold increase from 2021. Here is a detailed graph highlighting the country’s revenues and expenditures.

Oil and gas revenue are now the highest in history, as well as revenue from other sources. Expenditures are also the highest in the history as the entire country’s economy has shifted to producing for the war.

The drive to produce more missiles, artillery, and drones in particular, is paying dividends for Russia on the battlefield at a time when Ukraine is struggling to secure funding for the advanced western weaponry Kyiv needs to beat back the invasion. Earlier last week Ukraine’s army chief Valery Zaluzhny admitted Ukraine and its allies had not done enough to improve Ukraine’s capabilities at a time when Russia’s ability to reinvest in its own defense industry had given it a significant firepower advantage.

Couple that with a major shift in public opinion in the United States towards the continued support of Ukraine and the future of Ukraine looks very bleak.

Over 55% of Republicans support ending the conflict as quickly as possible, even if it means allowing Russia to keep territory it has captured from Ukraine.

And this is percentage will only increase as Donald Trump continues to build momentum in the race against Biden for the 2024 US Presidency. 

Incredibly Donald Trump is now emerging ahead of the polls against Joe Biden and despite having 91 felony cases against him has a legitimate shot at returning to the White House next year. 

Joe Biden’s blind support to Israel, who two weeks ago was ruled to be plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, has become a major issue for young voters, and just might be the X factor that ends Biden’s re-election campaign. As an American citizen, I’ve accepted the fact that my government miscalculated the resilience of Russia’s wartime economy, but it raises an even more important question. What happens if our government make the same mistake again with China, an economy when measured by Purchase Power Parity is six times the size of Russia and 20% larger than the United States? Of course, we know the neocons in Washington will never stop warmongering and are actively planting the seeds for the next conflict.

Just look at this recent article from Foreign Policy entitled How Primed for War is China? The major argument the authors present is that China is undergoing the largest military buildup by any country in decades, as shown by this graph which clearly indicates that China has 10x its military spending over the past 3 decades

But does this mean that China is really preparing for war? Does this mean that China will attack Taiwan in the future? It absolutely doesn’t and to understand why, we need more information. When we look at China’s military expenditure as a percentage of GDP over the same time frame, it's actually decreased by 50%!

I’ll leave you with one final take from my favorite geopolitical commentator Frenchman Arnaud Bertrand, who shared the truth about this Foreign Policy article: 

Everyone the United States is deeply involved with two major wars in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe right now and is doing it’s best to start a new conflict in the Asia Pacific region with China over Taiwan.

The United States is in desperate need of good leadership and more importantly smarter foreign policy decision makers. We are 265 days away from the 2024 Presidential Election and sadly our choices look like Biden and Trump once again. This is going to be a difficult stretch of time for the United States but one hopes the lessons from this war with Russia can prove to be a learning lesson to help guide us into better foreign policy decisions in the future.

We look forward to following these stories and if you would like to watch the full video presentation be sure to check it out on YouTube: