Jacques Sapir, a Franco-Russian economist who has run a yearly Franco-Russian economic seminar since 1991, just published an article in a kind of “gaullist” magazine called Geostratégie Magazine.
He reports that by taking advantage of the sanctions policy, Russia’s economy grew this year, between March and August, by 4.5%, or 3% if calculated annually. He credits that to 1) significant state support to import-substitution programs of products hit by the sanctions, 2) investing in manufacturing, 3) benefitting from spillover from high-tech military investments, 4) forcing the Russian billionaires speculating abroad to bring back their profits every year, 5) profiting from trade in industrial capacities with China and other countries, and 6) getting out of the dollar financial speculative markets. Sapir wrote: “The manufacturing industry achieved exceptional growth of 9.4% over the same period. Construction is also progressing strongly, and real wages have risen by an average of 8.0% over the last 6 months.
