S8 Ep349: SEGMENT 1: RUSSIA'S FAILING ECONOMY Guest: Michael Bernstam Bernstam analyzes the deteriorating state of Russia's economy under the weight of sanctions and war expenditures. Discussion examines inflation, labor shortages, industrial decline, and how long

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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SEGMENT 1: RUSSIA'S FAILING ECONOMY Guest: Michael Bernstam Bernstam analyzes the deteriorating state of Russia's economy under the weight of sanctions and war expenditures. Discussion examines inflation, labor shortages, industrial decline, and how long the Kremlin can sustain its military campaign in Ukraine as economic pressures mount and Western restrictions continue to squeeze Russian financial resources.
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0:56.6	I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague Michael Bernstein of the Hoover Institution.
1:01.5	Russia under sanctions. The Reuters headline in these last days.
1:12.9	IMF cuts Russia's 2026 growth forecast by 0.2 percentage points to 0.8%. That's a significant reduction with already after reductions.
1:20.3	So it would appear, Michael, that military Keynesianism has an end. This reduction, is it the energy,
1:27.1	is it everything? Good evening to you. And good evening to you. And what happened is that the IMF may be slightly, slightly behind the curve.
1:31.4	They rely on national statistics which are delayed. And what happens that other sources
1:37.6	suggest that it is not 0.8 of 1% of GDP. It's already 0.6 of 1% of GDP. Of course, it's a margin of error and a slight
1:47.3	difference, but the point is that, indeed, the high grows over 4% a year, which followed the
1:56.3	war and the fiscal stimulus and the military expenditure, it's over.
2:05.0	And it's over, and we have additional data from the budget deficit,
2:10.2	that they had the estimate of the budget deficit that would be half percentage of GDP.
2:13.4	Then they revised it to 1.5% of GDP.
2:21.9	Now they're saying that it is 2.6% of GDP, which is a very high by their standards, not by our standards.
2:29.4	But they have to finance it, and they're selling gold, they're selling Airbnb assets, they're increasing taxes. So generally, generally, yes, four years of growth, which was financed from the budget,
2:38.8	through the military industry, going into wages, going then into consumption, this entire cycle is over.
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