Russia’s economy is growing three times faster than that of the Eurozone, indicating an apparent failure of Western sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine.
According to the French investment firm Amundi, cited by British media on Thursday, Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 1.5 percent in 2024, while expectations for the Eurozone economy’s growth next year are a mere 0.5 percent.
The French fund manager said Russian trade imports and exports had remained virtually unaffected by the Western sanctions, while skyrocketing energy prices had left a heavy toll on the Eurozone.
Amundi said after losing access to Western markets, Russian firms had successfully reoriented most of the trade to the BRICS partners, Brazil, India, China and South Africa, as well as to Turkey and Kazakhstan.
Amundi is Europe’s largest fund manager in terms of assets. Its Chief Investment Officer Vincent Mortier said at a news conference in Paris that these countries were also now greatly benefiting from their boost in trade with Russia.
Mortier said the reality is that the US-led sanctions had backfired and “Europe has suffered directly and strongly” from the war in Ukraine.
The CIO of the French fund manager also said this showed the Western sanctions were ineffective. “It means that the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia – the major developed countries – are unable to sanction a country effectively… We can deplore it, but it’s a reality.”
Mortier said the sanctions had had some impact on certain Russian individuals and entities whose assets have been frozen over the past 20 months.
Russia began its military campaign in Ukraine in February 2022 after Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said one of the goals of the “special military operation” was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
In the meantime, the United States and its European allies have supplied tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and munitions to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow..
Also, the United States ramped up arms sales to NATO countries in 2021, compared with 2022, as the war prompted the member states to buy more weapons.
Analysts say military spending by the United States and its allies had increased at a level unprecedented since the end of World War II.
