Russia’s economy is much worse than it seems, and “elites are increasingly alarmed” as alternate GDP gauge shows huge contraction
https://fortune.com/2026/05/24/russian-economy-gdp-contraction-inflation-oil-prices-ukraine-war-elites-financial-crisis/?utm_source=reddit/
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The Swedish government has come up with some drastically different economic figures on Russia that make the Kremlin’s official data seem like a Potemkin village.
In a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard cautioned the West against overestimating Russia and said the economy is more fragile than it appears.
While Russia has claimed GDP expanded by about 13% between 2020 and 2024, Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span.
Moscow has also lowballed inflation substantially, according to Stenergard, who pointed out that Russia’s official inflation figure in 2024 was 10% while the central bank hiked interest rates to 21% that year.
Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: [https://fortune.com/2026/05/24/russian-economy-gdp-contraction-inflation-oil-prices-ukraine-war-elites-financial-crisis/?utm_source=reddit/](https://fortune.com/2026/05/24/russian-economy-gdp-contraction-inflation-oil-prices-ukraine-war-elites-financial-crisis/?utm_source=reddit/)
I mean, I don’t doubt that Russian officials have a strong incentive to overstate economic growth, and I haven’t read the original research (don’t know where to find it, anyone got a link?), but wouldn’t increasing energy prices since the Iran war be a major confounder here?
I imagine that when people spend less on “nighttime luminosity” (energy), this either means people have less to spend on energy, or energy prices have increased. I’m quite certain energy prices have increased a lot recently, so can we be certain that a decline in nighttime luminosity correlates to a decline in GDP in this case? Has nighttime luminosity in Russia declined that much more than in other countries? I imagine this very well may be the case, and maybe the original research accounts for this, but just from reading the article I’m not sure how solid the proxy is in recent months.
Edit: upon reading again I see the analysis runs from 2020-2024, so the Iran war wouldn’t be relevant here, but global energy prices still increased dramatically during this period, so the main point still stands.
Can anyone explain why the Ruble continues to apparently become stronger according to Google? I understand it’s not the reality, but is Russia really continuously throwing precious money into keeping it artificially “strong”?
The hourly Ukrainian cope has to stop, western media for some reason hasn’t moved past the talking point in 5 years, its getting ridiculous now.
It just reeks of desperation like you’re consoling yourself that you don’t actually have to do anything the enemy will automatically be defeated cause McDonald’s pulled out.
> Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span.
I just couldn’t bring myself to read the rest after reading that nonsense, the distance that EU is willing to go in absurdity for their resentment towards Russia….. do a similar analysis in EU during the summer but this time with daytime air conditioning.
Contraction is natural after Russia’s economic expansion for the last 3 years but what is not normal is the shrinking of the German economy. Nobody is going to convince me that the German or French economies are less fragile than the Russian economy for example.
As someone who has read a decent number of 19th century Russian translations… I have a lot of pity for the Russian people. As dumb and sheepish as they often appear, or may be portrayed, they also have a history of revolution.
Frankly, IMHO, more than ever… I think they truly need to draw upon Mutual Aid and The Conquest of Bread. They might also want to read up on the “History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918–1921).”
Notions of freedom and liberation are not alien to these people.