Putin's war economy: Are Russians feeling the pinch?
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Russia has revealed it will boost its defence spending by a quarter to $145 billion in 2025. But is Putin’s war economy sustainable? What does all this mean for life in the country? And how could it impact the war?
The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg joins us from a Moscow supermarket, Russian citizen ‘Gleb’ explains why there are dozens of types of cola in shops, and Bloomberg’s Stephanie Baker joins Carnegie’s Alexander Gabuev to discuss whether Russians are feeling the pinch.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov, Cordelia Hemming and Ivana Davidovic. The technical producer was Ben Andrews. The series producer is Tim Walklate. The senior news editor is Sarah Wadeson. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, it's 954 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:09.6 | And Vitali, the Russians have announced they are hugely increasing their spending on |
| 0:14.2 | defense. That's correct Russia is hiking defense spending yet again this time by a |
| 0:21.4 | quarter to another all-time high of 13.5 trillion rubles which |
| 0:27.8 | translates into more than a hundred billion pounds or almost a hundred and fifty billion dollars in 2025 that's 40% of government spending next year that is an astonishing amount of money. So if this is the highest |
| 0:46.6 | level of defense spending on record for Russia, what does that tell us about how |
| 0:52.0 | they view their approach to what's happening in Ukraine? |
| 0:55.0 | Well, clearly the message that Russia is sending to itself, its own people and the world, |
| 1:00.0 | is that it's determined, or Vladimir Putin is determined to continue pursuing the war. |
| 1:06.6 | Can he afford that? |
| 1:08.4 | Well, let's look at the numbers. |
| 1:09.8 | Despite all the Western sanctions, Russia's income from oil exports for example has surpassed |
| 1:17.0 | pre-war levels, the Russian economy is expected to grow faster this year than any of the G7 economies. That's the world's seven most |
| 1:25.2 | advanced economies. So Russian economy is doing pretty well. And that's what we're going |
| 1:30.8 | to explore, especially how it will impact the war in this episode of Ukrainecast. |
| 1:36.0 | Ukrainecast from BBC News. |
| 1:39.0 | Evil cannot be trusted. Ask pre-Gosin. |
| 1:43.0 | You are not dealing with a politician, but with a bloody monster. |
| 1:47.5 | Is there a need for a serious opponent? |
| 1:50.2 | Why? |
| 1:50.9 | Ukraine is unbroken, unowed, and unconquer. |
... |
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