“The growth of non-resource industry, which reached 8.5% last year, amounted to 4.2% at the end of the "past months", and is expected to be only 3% by the end of the year, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov told Putin.”

“The overall growth of industrial production will be 2%, he said. This is more than half the figures for 2023-24, when Rosstat recorded increases in output at factories and plants of 4.3% and 4.6%, respectively.” People in Russia don’t even trust Rosstat numbers

“The "rather tough conditions of the monetary policy" of the Central Bank had an effect, Siluanov explained to Putin. The Central Bank needs to continue lowering the key rate - this "will accelerate its own growth and will ensure a recovery trend for the manufacturing industries," Manturov added.”

Are they trying to blame the Russian Central Bank for this mess?

“After three years of military boom, when the GDP growth rate set a 13-year record, the Russian economy fell into depression: 20 trillion rubles spent on the army and weapons gave rise to a surge in inflation,…”

“…and in order to slow it down, the Central Bank raised the key rate to levels that the country has not seen since the early 2000s.”

“According to the IMF forecast, by the end of the year, the Russian economy will grow by 0.9%, three times slower than the global economy and five times slower than China.” The IMF could be wrong too, and the reality could be even worse.

Oh look…it’s all the things I’ve been warning people about for months!

“We are seeing signs of a hard landing in many sectors of the economy, says Anton Tabakh, chief economist at the Expert RA rating agency: industrial production and consumer confidence indices, rail shipments, car and consumer durables purchases are all going down.” 🍿

What do economies land on?

“In essence, the country is on the brink of recession: fears that it is inevitable are entirely justified, says Sofia Donetsk, chief economist at T-Investments….”

Yes.

Trump does that, perhaps on Putin's advice! 😂