The West’s sweeping sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine are shaping up to be the West’s most monumental miscalculation in modern history.  The sanctions have not brought the Russian economy to its knees, as was widely predicted.  Instead, it’s the Western economies that are reeling, their economic growth all but stopped.  Many of them are simultaneously suffering from both high inflation and energy shortages.

According to the IMF, the Russian economy will grow faster than Germany’s or the UK’s this year.  Next year, it will also grow faster than those of the U.S., Japan, Italy, and much of the rest of the West, its growth in GDP per capita will exceed that of the advanced economies as a whole, and it will achieve the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio among the G20 nations.  Russia’s unemployment rate of 3.5% is the lowest since the Soviet Union fell.  Russia’s economic performance — S&P Global recently confirmed its bullish private sector business confidence — is all the more remarkable since Russia is simultaneously fighting an expensive proxy war against the combined weight of the armories of the West.

As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at the U.S. State Department in February, the West to date has provided unprecedented support to Ukraine, with around $120 billion in military, humanitarian and financial assistance.  The transfer of military materiel has been so extensive that many of the NATO countries’ arsenals have been depleted: Germany is down to two days of ammunition and is now unable to defend itself, according to the country’s defence minister; the UK’s stockpiles of ammunition would last but a few days in battle; France is facing “a major shortage of munitions,” and the US military now doubts its ability to both continue to supply Ukraine and maintain its own readiness.  “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current production rate,” states Stoltenberg.

Russia’s Rise – American Thinker