DISINFO: Russia is the largest economy in Europe and will grow in 2024 wile Europe is in recession
SUMMARY
The statistics show without ambiguity that Russia is now the first economy in Europe and will have a significant growth rate in 2024, while a large part of the EU is in recession.
RESPONSE
Recurrent narrative about the inevitability of Russian victory in Ukraine and the economic success of Russia since the beginning of the war of invasion of Ukraine.
The claim that Russian economy outperformed German and other EU’s economies is incorrect as no reliable figures are available and the nature of the economies are now very different. Most detailed statistics are now classified in Russia and it is impossible to evaluate the reliability of consolidated macro-economic figures. People observe in everyday life significant discrepancies between official statistics of Rosstat and real life as Vice-President of the state Duma exposed. Moreover, the economy turned into a war economy for a significant part. This development is not sustainable as the reserves shrink and the lack of expenditure to maintain old infrastructures cause breakdowns, as the series of heating system failures in January 2024.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the EU’s share of global GDP and PPP is expected to be 14.34 percent for 2024, only behind China (19.05 percent) and the US (15.02 percent) and compared to a mere 2.84 percent for Russia. The sum of the EU, plus the US and other Western nations, is well above 30 percent of the global GDP and PPP. Even the claim that Russia is the top single economy in Europe is false, as it remains behind Germany’s 3.11 percent.
Read also related stories such as: Russia’s economy is massively outperforming that of the collective West, or Putin’s Russia stood firm despite Western sanctions.