Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 28 – As long as Putin’s war in Ukraine and his standoff with the West continue, the Russian economy will stagnate, leaving the country unable to tackle its most important domestic problems and ensuring that on a wide variety of measures, Russia will fall ever further behind other countries, according to the “consensus” prediction of HSE economists.
This year, the Moscow economic experts say, Russia’s GDP growth will be no more than 0.6 percent, with no prospects that this metric will rise to more than two percent into the 2030s (dcenter.hse.ru/consensus_forecast discussed at ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/28/rossii-predrekli-pochti-desyat-let-ekonomicheskogo-zastoya-a204681).
Given that the IMF now assumes that the growth in GDP for the world as a whole will rise 3.1 to 3.2 percent a year over the next seven years, this means that Russia will fall ever further behind and will lack the resources and technology to tackle the problems that plague that country.
Moreover, according to the economists at the Higher School of Economists, Russia will lose over this period whatever remaining technological advantages it has and its best educated people who will either leave or not be able to get the kind of education needed to put Russia on track to renewed growth.
Government officials and pro-government analysts argue that Russia will be able to avoid such a disaster and even that the war itself is putting Russia on track to grow at a far more rapid rate than the consensus view suggests. But this view, one echoing the conclusions independent Russian scholars abroad (https://case-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/the-dictators-legacy-a-new-zastoy-ru.pdf), is viewed by the consensus as “utopioan.”
Only if the Kremlin ends the war and its break with the West, those who take the consensus view say will Russia be able to resume anything like the growth it had before 2022.
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