The wartime economy that Russia spurred into overdrive is slowing, causing tensions among the country’s economic elites as the war with Ukraine approaches its fourth year.
Many Russian civilian industries have stopped growing, and some had even gone into decline by October, according to the latest official data. The country’s currency, the ruble, dropped to its weakest level in two years last week, and businesses say they are struggling to get new loans or get paid by clients.
The central bank sharply raised the country’s benchmark interest rate in October to 21 percent, the highest since the end of the Soviet Union, in an attempt to dampen inflation.
Last month, the central bank also lowered its forecast for Russia’s economic growth next year to 0.5 to 1.5 percent, compared with 3.5 to 4 percent this year. The slowdown comes even as the government continues to pump record amounts of money into the economy to finance the war.
The combination of rising prices and falling economic activity has led some economists and officials to warn that the Russian economy is moving toward stagflation, a quagmire where prices rise quickly without growth.
Western nations have subjected Russia over the last three years to some of the strictest economic sanctions in modern history to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s slowing growth and rising inflation, economists say, show that the sanctions are having an impact, putting a dent in the stimulating effect that the Kremlin’s enormous wartime spending has had on the economy, they say.
Civilian companies are particularly feeling the pinch. The Russian Railways, the country’s largest employer, which transports a large share of the nation’s goods and passengers, reported its freight volume fell almost 9 percent in October compared with a year ago. To compensate for falling demand, the company is raising prices more than 10 percent in December, and trimming planned investment for 2025 by a third.
Still, the data suggests that the economic strains are still far from provoking the kind of crisis that might compel Mr. Putin to curtail his ambitions in Ukraine.
The immediate casualty of the recent downturn could become Russia’s central bank, arguably the last state entity in the country that has operated somewhat independently from the Kremlin.
There are rising tensions between Russia’s industrialists and the bank over the cost of borrowing that could have far-reaching consequences, including what type of economy Russia will inherit after the war.
The disagreements have emerged in public speeches and economic reports, part of a delicate dance around the elephant in the war room: the inability to blame the war for the slowdown, which would risk Mr. Putin’s ire.
Instead, Russia’s economic elites are blaming technical policy decisions, and one another, exposing the tensions behind a facade of wartime unity.
Industrialists and allied officials have directed their complaints at the central bank’s chief, Elvira Nabiullina, accusing her of suffocating the economy with record interest rates.
Ms. Nabiullina has forcefully defended her monetary shock therapy, arguing it is necessary to reduce the 9 percent annual inflation by half next year and ensure long-term economic stability.
“It is clear that if you’re an entrepreneur in Russia who doesn’t make, say, ballistic missiles, then you’re having a tough time,” said Alexander Kolyandr, a Russian economy expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “But because you cannot fight the root cause, you fight the symptoms.”
Mr. Putin for years gave Ms. Nabiullina an unusual degree of autonomy to keep the Russian economy stable. But now, as the economic pressures of the war multiply, her tactics are being criticized by a loud chorus of the country’s industrialists, business associations and economists close to the government.
Even Mikhail Mishustin, Russia’s prime minister and Mr. Putin’s chief economic enforcer, took a rare swipe at the central bank in November, blaming high interest rates for falling investment.
Economists from a Moscow-based research organization added their voice to the criticism. “Because of the actions of the central bank, the Russian economy is practically facing the threat of stagflation,” the organization, called the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Forecasting, wrote in a November report.
The group added that nearly one in two Russian companies now say that problems obtaining loans are stifling their growth.
The report’s strong language created waves among the Russian elites, because the wonkily named group is run by Dmitri Belousov, the brother of Andrei Belousov, the powerful defense minister and longtime former economic adviser to Mr. Putin. The report was interpreted by some as a sign of Ms. Nabiullina’s waning support from Mr. Putin.
Another attack came from the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a pro-government association of large companies known by its Russian acronym, R.S.P.P.
The organization said that 36 percent of its members had reported being unable to collect payments from clients in the third quarter of this year, up 14 percentage points from a year ago. They blamed high interest rates.
Then, in an internal report leaked to the Russian news media, R.S.P.P. made an unusual request for the central bank to coordinate its monetary policy with the government, a direct attack on the central bank’s independence. R.S.P.P. has since distanced itself from the report, but the leak nonetheless led Ms. Nabiullina to defend her policy in a forceful speech to the Russian Parliament.
“Today we are finding ourselves for the first time in a situation where practically all resources in the economy are being utilized,” she told lawmakers in November, implying limited scope for further growth. “Calls to postpone the lowering of inflation are based on an argument that today microeconomic stability is less important, that it can be compromised in favor of a forced economic jump.”
“I am convinced that it’s the reverse — today we must value stability as never before,” she added.
The central bank’s reports have painted an increasingly downbeat economic outlook.
The value of payments received by companies, a barometer of economic activity, fell 2.9 percent in October compared with the average in the previous three months, according to the central bank. The slowdown was particularly pronounced in sectors without direct connection to the military, such as education, construction, and oil and gas production.
“The only things that grow at meaningful rate are those related to war,” said Mr. Kolyandr.
The warning signs are flashing elsewhere.
New American sanctions on Russian banks in November have contributed to a large decline in the value of the ruble. The ruble fell to 109 against the dollar on Friday, its weakest rate since March 2022.
The ruble’s decline means that Russian companies must pay more for foreign goods, feeding inflation and weakening the effectiveness of Ms. Nabiullina’s interest rate shock therapy, said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and a former official at the Russian central bank.
To be sure, economists say the Russian economy will not collapse in the foreseeable future. Wages continue outstripping inflation, raising the standard of living of ordinary Russians and denting the impact of the slowdown on the population, according to the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe, or CASE, a Cyprus-based group of opposition Russian economists.
Real wages in Russia grew nearly 18 percent since the start of the war, reversing a seven-year decline, the economists said in a recent report.
Inflation, although stubborn, remains in the single digits, and the Kremlin maintains ample means to finance the war, the CASE economists said. The Russian government is raising taxes on companies and wealthy individuals and is tapping into its sovereign wealth fund. The government’s low debt burden — about 18 percent of economic output — means it has ample room to keep borrowing from Russian banks.
The battle over Russian interest rates underlines longer-term economic tensions, said Ms. Prokopenko.
The Kremlin’s seemingly endless war has persuaded Russian business elites to seek short-term profit in an overheated economy over long-term investment. The growing calls for cheap money now threaten to dismantle a system of economic checks and balances that have kept the Russian economy stable over most of Mr. Putin’s rule, Ms. Prokopenko added.
“If a warring nation can’t present to its people an idea of a bright future, then it makes sense to stuff yourself while the party lasts,” she said. “You may not have that chance later.”
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