The Ukrainian president said this week he hopes the war will end by next June. Not this summer. Not this year. But in 12 months’ time. Sanctions, he believes, and four years of gruesome war will finally hit the Russian economy, pushing it into a deep budget deficit. The IMF’s latest forecast sort of backs this up. Russia’s GDP growth is set to slow to 0.9 per cent next year, down from over 4 per cent in 2024. Most of Russia’s workforce is already employed and its central bank’s key interest rate is at 21 per cent. Still, for many Ukrainians, Russia’s downfall feels like yet another fairy tale.
They’ve heard it all before. In the first days of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians were told it would be over in ‘two to three weeks’. And when those weeks passed – again, ‘two to three weeks’. Russia’s stockpiles had almost run out of missiles, Ukrainians were told.
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