{"id":34021,"date":"2025-10-03T06:41:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T06:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/russias-economic-growth-may-be-too-weak-to-sustain-defense-and-social-spending-a-top-business-leader-warns\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T06:41:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T06:41:14","slug":"russias-economic-growth-may-be-too-weak-to-sustain-defense-and-social-spending-a-top-business-leader-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/russias-economic-growth-may-be-too-weak-to-sustain-defense-and-social-spending-a-top-business-leader-warns\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia&#8217;s economic growth may be too weak to sustain defense and social spending, a top business leader warns"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68df480ccc993f9955cf7171?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Russia&#039;s President Vladimir Putin tours an exhibition of military equipment.\"\/><figcaption>Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he was looking to hike taxes on the rich to bankroll the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Sergei Bobylyov\/Pool\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Russia&#039;s economy is slowing, raising concerns about funding defense and social spending.<\/li>\n<li>Western sanctions and soaring military outlays are straining its growth and stability.<\/li>\n<li>Moscow is planning tax hikes to help bankroll the Ukraine war effort.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Russia&#039;s economy has slowed to a pace that could jeopardize its ability to cover surging defense, security, and social costs, warned a top business leader.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It seems to me that indeed, this cooling or &#039;managed soft landing&#039; is not very soft and not very managed,&quot; Alexander Shokhin, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told Rossiya 24 TV channel on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Shokhin said that at the start of the year, officials assumed Russia needed at least 2% annual growth to cover defense, security, social spending, and investment. But growth is now expected to fall well short of that target.<\/p>\n<p>He said Russia would be &quot;lucky&quot; to see GDP growth of just over 1% by the end of 2025 and 1.3% in 2026. Russia&#039;s central bank has forecasted 1.0% to 2.0% GDP growth for 2025 \u2014 sharply lower than Russia&#039;s 4.3% GDP growth in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, analysts polled by Interfax news agency expect Russian economic growth to come in at 1.1% this year \u2014 down from their August forecast of 1.4%.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This is low, undoubtedly. Therefore, it is very important that this period of cooling or managed contraction, or &#039;managed soft landing,&#039; does not drag on, because a rebound is already needed,&quot; Shokhin said.<\/p>\n<p>Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered sweeping Western sanctions, Russia has kept its economy afloat through massive defense spending and revenue from oil and gas exports.<\/p>\n<p>That spending has kept factories busy and supported output \u2014 but at a cost.<\/p>\n<p>Russia&#039;s economy has become so militarized that its top central banker warned at the end of 2023 that it risked overheating. To cool demand, the central bank sharply raised interest rates, a move that curbed inflation but further slowed growth.<\/p>\n<p>Shokhin argued that Russia needs a stronger, sustainable baseline growth rate to remain stable.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;2% to 2.5% is that optimal economic growth rate for a non-overheated economy that indeed makes it possible to solve a wide range of tasks,&quot; Shokhin said.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was looking to hike taxes on the rich to bankroll the war in Ukraine that started in February 2022.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Tax increases confirm that the Kremlin is preparing for long-term military financing, for which consumers are beginning to pay, and on which the military-industrial complex continues to flourish,&quot; wrote Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, in a Monday report.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he was looking to hike taxes on the rich to bankroll the war in Ukraine. Sergei Bobylyov\/Pool\/AFP\/Getty Images Russia&#039;s economy is slowing, raising concerns about funding defense and social spending. Western sanctions and soaring military outlays are straining its growth and stability. Moscow is planning tax hikes to help [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}