NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong.

And I'm Patty Hirsch.

When Russia commenced its second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the world responded with sanctions.

Most economists said it wouldn't be long before the Russian economy collapsed.

But it hasn't turned out that way. Russia may have become bogged down in a war of attrition,

and it may be almost $320 billion in debt. But its economy, soldiers on. Today, depending on how you measure it, Russia's economy

is now either the 11th or the fourth largest in the world.

So on today's show, we'll give you six reasons why Russia has managed to keep its economy up

and running, despite a war, a sanctions regime, and its ballooning debt. And we'll learn about one of the most significant and grizzly factors in Russia's resilience,

Schmertonomica or death economics.

That's coming up after the break.

No one would say that Russia's economy is doing well exactly.

The country's burning between half a billion to a billion dollars a day on its war in Ukraine.

Its debt load has increased in the last year to $320 billion,

and its growth rate has slowed from roughly 4% in 2024 than less than 1% in the third quarter of last year. Still, Russia's economy is

puttering blithely along. Alina Rybukova is an economist and a Russia specialist fellow at the

Peterson Institute. She says the biggest reason for this is that Russia has something the rest of us

want. We still consume sufficient number of energy, oil, gas, and also some metals and mining,

and we use it for fertilizers as well, that the global economy still needs.

The most important of these commodities is, of course, oil.

It's Russia's biggest earner, which is why we sanctioned it.

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