According to the conditions, the Russian economy is doing well, assured President Vladimir Putin in a speech on 15 December. He pointed out that the economy was set to shrink by just 2.5 percent this year. It is far less than many in the West had thought. President Vladimir Putin visits a military training camp outside Ryazan on October 22. He rarely moves out into the field. Photo: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV / AFP There is plenty of food and necessary consumer goods in the shops in Russia. Putin constantly gives new orders to the government to “produce Russian” to replace imports. Yet the country is already paying a high price for Putin’s war. Not everything is visible, and it will certainly grow. The most important costs of the war can be summed up in six points. 1. Killed soldiers There are no reliable figures. But the US defense chief, Mark Milley, estimated at the beginning of November that around 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on September 21 that 5,937 Russians had been killed. Natalia lives in Ryazan in Russia. She tends the grave of her only son, who died in the fighting near Kyiv on one of the first days of the war. December 17. Photo: NANNA HEITMANN / NYT While the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed on 29 December that around 104,560 Russian soldiers have been killed in the war so far. Grave journalists from the BBC and the independent Russian news service Mediazona have confirmed over 10,700 dead via open sources. But all figures are uncertain. It has been documented that many Russian soldiers have been sent into the war without knowledge, training, updated maps and communication equipment. The New York Times has interviewed first-hand sources who tell of chaotic conditions on the ground. About an air force that failed to be support. Many Russians do not have access to independent sources, and by no means all try to obtain them. But a good number have understood – and left. A well-grown man says goodbye to his loved one at the collection center for recently mobilized soldiers. Kazan, October 23. Photo: TASS / SipaUSA 2. Brain drain Around 100,000 IT workers have left Russia since the war started. This is around 10 per cent of all employees in this sector. This was stated by the country’s digitization minister, Maksut Sjadayev, on 20 December. Already during the first half of the year, 25,000 IT specialists are said to have left and not returned. Programmers, web designers, analysts, project managers and testers left. Many of them now live in former Soviet republics, such as Armenia, Uzbekistan and Georgia. Some traveled to Turkey. A large proportion still work for Russian companies and institutions. In addition, an unknown number of doctors, journalists and cultural workers have left Russia. Many left in the days immediately after the additional mobilization was announced on 21 September. When so many disappear, it is not possible to fill the gaps within two or three years. – I am Russian, and I am against the war, says the poster of the Russian woman. From an anti-war demonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia, March 12. Many escaped there. Photo: LAETITIA VANCON / NYT 3. Isolation for the middle class It is not so easy to travel west now. I have met them at the shop, at the cafe, at the gym. Young Russians shrugging resignedly. They radiate impotence. For them, Europe is closed for the foreseeable future. They don’t get a visa, and they don’t have anything to pay with. But they know that many people perceive it as “unpatriotic” to complain about such things. Conversations with news’s dispatchers are usually conducted in whispers. – The new normality is “life without”, wrote editor Konstantin Remchukov in a leading position in the newspaper Nezavisimaja Gazeta on Christmas Eve. But he also wrote that this affects only around 20 percent of the population. – They are few, well educated, energetic and international in their way of life. But their losses don’t count. It’s not entirely fair, because they haven’t done anything wrong, Remchukov added. A Russian woman at the exclusive GUM shopping center on Red Square. The middle class has become accustomed to everything being available. The photo is from December 2014, when Western luxury brands still had stores in Moscow. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP The newspaper editor also wrote that the “umbilical cord connection” between Putin and “the great mass of the people” has given him the legitimacy to drive on with all his might. – For these core voters, they will not suffer direct losses from the fact that it will be impossible to withdraw dollars, fly to Europe and pay with a Visa card, notes Remchukov. But cars are important to Putin’s voters. 4. Car production has plummeted The war and the sanctions have led to an abrupt halt in imports and production of foreign car brands in Russia. According to an international database for the automotive industry, the production of Russian passenger cars also fell by two-thirds from January to October. That is compared to the same period last year. This is mainly due to the problems with parts from the West. Alternative sources, such as India and China, are either too slow or anxious to be hit by sanctions themselves. Car production is a good litmus test of the country’s ability to import substitute industrial consumer goods. Putin has therefore instructed the government to bet big. Russia is relaunching the Moskvitch, but now in a version that is confusingly similar to the Chinese JAC e-JS4. Moscow, November 23. Photo: EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA / Reuters Production of all types of new cars is to double by 2025, while car parts are to triple. Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov stated this during a meeting with the Prime Minister on 26 December. There are many other sectors that are also struggling because they lack western inputs. But Putin says it only shows that the West wants a weak Russia. 4. Troubled trade and stagnation Russia is dependent on exporting oil and gas. In 2021, energy exports provided 45 per cent of the revenue on the state budget. According to the Reuters news agency, gas exports to Europe are lower than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Total Russian gas exports are down by 45 percent this year, according to Gazprom’s director. A large part of the gas Europe bought before the war has thus not found other buyers. The gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 was technically finished when it was blown up in September. Now it will probably never be used. It is not clear who was behind the explosion, but both sides claim they suspect the other. Russia has also stopped exports to Europe via Nord Stream 1, which runs in parallel via the Baltic Sea to Germany. Photo: The Danish Armed Forces When it comes to oil, the EU has introduced an import ban, plus a maximum price for Russian oil to countries outside the EU. This means that oil sold for over 60 dollars a barrel will not be able to be transported on ships that must be insured by the usual insurance companies. In the current year, increased energy prices have made up for lower volumes. But Russia has no guarantee that this will happen in the coming years. The long-term consequences of isolation are economic stagnation. Russia may be forced to import inputs at a lower quality and higher price. Eventually, they may have problems getting hold of high-tech parts for their own energy production, says economist Jay Zagorsky to the newspaper Insider. Russia already has major problems with spare parts for aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. In February, their aircraft accounted for nearly two-thirds of Russia’s passenger aircraft. In August, Reuters reported that planes had been grounded to strip them of parts for in-service aircraft. An Aeroflot Boeing plane on the runway at Sheremetova Airport near Moscow. Around 650 aircraft from Boeing and Airbus are said to have been operating in Russia when the major Russian attack on Ukraine began on 24 February. Photo: Maxim Shemetov / Reuters There is now a huge investment in producing own aircraft as a replacement. But it goes slowly. 5. Freedom of speech lifeless – You probably understand that it is difficult for me to talk to you. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten similar responses from people I ask for an interview. For now, anyone under “foreign influence” can be classified as a “foreign agent.” It is almost synonymous with “spy” in Russian parlance. Before, it was the case that people who received a fee or salary from foreign clients risked being called an “agent”. It is forbidden to call the war “war” or to speak disparagingly of Russia’s armed forces. You risk up to 15 years in prison. Even President Putin recently called it “war”, not “special operation”. Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitrij Muratov on his way out of the Russian Supreme Court on 15 September. The court decided that the online version of Novaja Gazeta also had to be shut down. A separate “European” edition is now published from Latvia. Photo: EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA / Reuters Critical media, such as Novaya Gazeta and Ekho Moskvy, have been shut down. Journalists and commentators go into exile. One of them is peace prize winner and editor Dmitrij Muratov. Everyone knows that “the walls have ears”, that mobile phones and laptops are turned into instruments for surveillance. No one who has publicly criticized the war or Putin can feel safe. It is more oppressive than in the Soviet Union in the latter half of the 1980s. The technological efficiency was also not the same. 6. War and self-understanding “The Great Patriotic War” has had a unifying effect on Russians in the decades after the Second World War. It is associated with collective suffering, but also collective pride. Without the Soviet effort, the rest of the world would not have been able to stop Hitler. The war in Afghanistan is “forgotten”. There is also the war against the separatists in Chechnya in the 1990s, at least almost. But the war in Ukraine will not be easily forgotten, even if it were to end in the spring. Recruits carry ammunition during training at a military camp near Rostov. The picture is from 4 October, two weeks after the partial mobilization of 300,000 soldiers was announced. Photo: AP It will not be easy to express pride in the Russian soldier’s efforts among “foreigners”. Those who believe the propaganda that the soldiers are fighting “Ukrainian Nazis” will get a lightning-quick correction in meetings with people outside Russia. Some will probably feel ashamed of being a Russian citizen, as a number of Russians I have met say they feel now. It is impossible to justify the Russian attack and the Russian annexation based on international law or internationally recognized humanitarian principles. The war has given life to anti-Russian currents that are beyond responsibility for what happens on the battlefield. In a Europe where orchestras have canceled concerts of Tchaikovsky’s music, and where some advocate a general cultural boycott of Russia, it will be challenging to be Russian outside Russia for the foreseeable future.
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