All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Russian economy.

Let's do an update on the Russian economy because the European Union, people like Kayakalis,

believe that now is the time to really go after the Russian economy, to really crank up sanctions

because the Russian economy is on the brink of collapse.

And we have new numbers on the Russian economy, which point to something totally different.

So what is the state of the Russian economy?

Well, the first thing to say is that there was a significant rebound in March.

Now, as we discussed in recent programs, there was a contraction

in January and there was a contraction in February. We've had revised figures for both of these

contractions and they turned out to be slightly smaller than initially reported. So the contraction in January, it was reported as 2.2% as compared with the situation the previous year.

And it turns out it was closer to minus, to 1.8%.

So it's still a contraction and a sizable one, but not quite as big. And the,

in March, there was a significant rebound. And the economy grew in March year on year,

1.8%. So overall, we've had a contraction in the first quarter of 0.3%, which, frankly, is not really

recession territory. Now, that's still a weaker performance in the first

quarter than the ministries and the central bank were predicting, and which Putin had been led to believe.

And the result is that they've had to reduce their growth estimate for this year.

So they're now saying that growth will be 0.4%, not 1.5%.

And I think this is largely based, as I said, on this stagnation in the first quarter.

It's possible, however, that these figures are going to be underestimates.

It's based on an assumption that oil prices across the entire year will

average at $59 a barrel. At the moment, of course, oil prices are much higher than that.

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