Opinion: Putin’s economic gamble is a ticking time bomb for Russia’s future

Two and a half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine , the Russian economy seems like a riddle wrapped in an enigma of competing narratives.

An economy in serious trouble would have high unemployment and high inflation; yet in terms of jobs in Russia , the economy is doing well.

The war has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of would-be workers and caused about a million more people to leave the country; and the government is spending massively on military production.

But Russia is nowhere close to the economic collapse that many commentators predicted and hoped for.

Russian people are making a material contribution to the prosecution of Putin ’s war through their willingness to pay more for less.

Many goods that were previously exported from the West are being replaced by lower-quality products from other countries, China chief among them.

The fall in living standards is not reflected in the headline GDP number, because imports are not a part of GDP, whereas import-substituting production is.

Putin ’s war not only imposes on Russians a worse life than they otherwise would have had, it also condemns future generations.

No country in the modern era has achieved sustained economic growth without becoming increasingly open to international trade, authors say.

Whenever the Ukraine war ends, Russia will come back to haunt it, they say.