Sberbank’s studies: Russian GDP down by 7 percent in 2022 and 10.3% in 2023. The Kazakh leader: we will not recognize Donetsk and Lugansk. And Putin cripples his name
Every now and then some grain of reality enters the propaganda engine. Vladimir Putin has mangled his name, pronouncing it three times in as many different ways, as if to remind him who the boss is. Margherita Simonyan, the moderator of the debate between the two heads of state, shook her head several times to distance herself. With the head of the Kremlin sitting next to him, Qasim Tokaev, president of Kazakhstan, she went straight ahead, continuing to express concepts that were not very aligned. Starting with the economy. “The choice to rely only on one’s own strength is absolutely unsustainable, because it is now impossible to replace imports”. Up to the point of defining “unproductive” the counter sanctions imposed on European countries.
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The first self-sufficient edition of the St. Petersburg Forum was to be and was yet another celebration of the anti-Western turn. But it has also brought to the surface some unexpected element of self-awareness. “If nothing is done in the current situation, the return of the Russian economy to the 2021 level could take about 10 years.” Herman Gref, president of Sberbank, the main Russian credit institution, belongs to the “party of silence”, whose members disapprove of the Special Military Operation but remain covered and aligned, awaiting events.
Precisely because of the usual prudence of a man nicknamed “the fox”, and in any case very close to Putin, of whom he was Minister of Economy and Commerce from 2000 to 2007, his speech made his oligarch colleagues jump in their seats. . And not just them. Gref, who is also Kazakh himself, made the numbers talk, complete with slides distributed to investors. According to what he himself called an “inertia” scenario, Sberbank’s studies predict that Russian GDP will fall by 7 percent in 2022 and 10.3% in 2023 compared to 2021, when it was up by 4%. A decline that “in the best of hypotheses will be bridged in 2020, with a return to -0.1%”. The day before, Elvira Nabiulina, governor of the Bank of Russia had said the same things, with even more pessimistic tones. “Conditions have changed for a long time, if not forever. And it is clear to everyone that it will no longer be the same ».
But Tokaev went much further, achieving sheer heresy, with the recognition of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. “Our country respects international laws. For this reason, we do not recognize Taiwan, Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And we will apply the same principle to newly formed “quasi-states” as in our opinion the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk should be considered ». At this point, the mangling of the name was no longer enough. Staring at his colleague, Putin coldly stated that the entire former USSR is “historic Russia”.
There is no love between Kazakhstan and Russia. Just last January, the army foiled a coup against Tokaev, who has ruled the country since March 2019 after Nur-Sultan Nazarbayev’s almost thirty years in power. The media in Astana had no doubts in pointing to the Kremlin as the principal. The stone thrown into the pond by the Kazakh president immediately produced its effects. “Territorial issues are not raised between friendly countries,” United Russia deputy Konstantin Zatulin said yesterday. “If this principle fails, then anything is possible. It seems to me that Kazakhstan must pay attention to this aspect ».
We are under threat, not too veiled. It matters little that the diligent parliamentarian was taken up by the secretary general of RU Andrey Turchak: «provocative and tendentious comments». The discomfort of the so-called satellite states is becoming increasingly evident. Georgia is still “shocked” by the Special Military Operation. In early June, Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliev said he was “proud” to support the territorial integrity of Kiev. Armenia insists on a diplomatic solution to the conflict, not to mention Moldova. The Eastern air is less and less serene, and more and more unstable.
June 18, 2022 (change June 18, 2022 | 22:54)
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