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Russia has adapted to living with sanctions, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the press, per TASS.
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Peskov said Russia has been living with sanctions for decades and isn’t afraid of more restrictions.
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The IMF expects Russia’s GDP to grow 2.2% on-year in 2023 as Moscow continues to spend on the war in Ukraine.
It’s been 20 months since the West and its allies started slapping a barrage of sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine — but the Kremlin doesn’t seem too shaken up about the restrictions.
“Russia has been living under a sanctions regime for quite a long time, for decades, so we have sufficiently adapted to it,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told reporters on Tuesday, per TASS state news agency’s English-language report.
Peskov did not elaborate on the previous sanctions, but Russians have been under trade restrictions even back when the country was part of the Soviet Union.
And Peskov appears unfazed about the prospect of further sanctions, too.
“Of course, such time horizons as five years and further do not scare us at all. It is quite easy to predict that attempts to hold our economy back will continue,” Peskov added.
Peskov’s comments shed light on official thinking and strategy in Russia’s economy following 11 rounds of hard-hitting sanctions from the European Union and wave after wave of US restrictions aimed at squeezing the country’s war chest.
Russia has been sanction-proofing itself since 2014, after being hit with a raft of trade restrictions for illegally annexing Crimea from Ukraine. Russia’s measures to shield itself from sanctions include building up its reserves, stashing up gold, weaning itself off foreign capital, and paying down debt.
And over the past year, Russia has been selling energy products to alternative markets and has forced certain foreign businesses to continue operating in the country by making it difficult for them to exit the market.
Beyond regular businesses, the Kremlin’s wartime spending has been a key contributor to Russia’s economy — and that spending is driving an economic boom.
Russia’s GDP grew by 4.9% in the second quarter of this year, topping most forecasts, per Bloomberg. The reading is also the economy’s best showing since the last quarter of 2021.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration has raised pensions, salaries, and other benefits for people who are not well-off and subsidized mortgages since the war started.
While Russia’s economy appears to be chugging along, the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, is muted about the country’s prospects. The IMF expects Russia’s GDP to grow 2.2% this year from a year ago — reversing a 2.1% decline in 2022.
The country’s longer-term outlook is “dim” because sanctions would hurt productive capacity and growth in the medium term, said Alfred Kammer, the IMF’s European Director, at a press conference earlier this month.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
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