Page 6 - RusRPTFeb24

1.0 Executive summary
The latest revisions to Rosstat data says that Russia ended 2023 with even better growth than the 3.5% expected at 4%. This is almost double the 2.2% expected as late as December.
The military Keynesianism bump to Russia’s economy has been extremely powerful indeed and is a testament to the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has pulled out all the stops in his effort to win the war. Ukraine also had a strong year with 5% growth, against the 3% contraction that was predicted at the start of the year.
Other than that, there is not much to report on the war. Ukraine’s counteroffensive failed but Russia has also been unable to make any gains having captured a total of some 40km in the whole year. Both sides are now essentially in defence mode. Putin is waiting for the US elections in November, although analysts are speculating there will be a Russian spring counteroffensive to keep the pressure on. Ukraine is waiting for the West to allocate more money.
But Putin is looking confident as he gets ready for his own presidential election at the end of March.
At home the surprise has been a sudden display of public support across Russia for aspiring presidential candidate Boris Nadezhnin, a liberal critic of the war seen by many as the Kremlin’s preferred liberal spoiler candidate.
However, the long lines of people waiting in sub-zero temperatures to add their signatures to the 100,000 needed for Nadezhdin’s candidacy to move forward may well have alarmed the Kremlin’s electoral cosplay department.
Nadezhdin's campaign has now amassed over 150,000 signatures and remains the opposition’s best hope for anything even resembling a candidate that represents their views since the brief but ill-fated candidacy campaign of Yekaterina Duntsova, who was barred from running. Even the other liberal leaders like jailed opposition blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny have called on the population to support Nadezhdin – anyone but Putin, and the hope of denying Putin the 80% of the vote he is hoping for (on a par with his approval ratings).
Nadezhdin has put in his 100,000 signatures needed to qualify and at the time of writing it is possible that he will be barred from running and that may be followed by some large protests, but no one is expecting things to run out of control. While Russians have been excited to have someone to back who is against the war and clearly different from Putin, they remain under-energised.
6 RUSSIA Country Report February 2024 www.intellinews.com