“Inflation has slowed down, weekly price growth has come closer to normal and for a number of products prices have already started to fall,” Putin said during a government meeting on economic issues. .
According to him, this resilience is due to two factors: the good health of the rouble, which has “actively strengthened in recent times” to return to pre-crisis levels. And “consumer demand”, back to normal after a “peak in February-March”, when Russians rushed to shops and daily consumer goods for fear of shortages or a fall in the ruble.
The Russian president called for “guaranteeing a gradual normalization of price dynamics” and avoiding “a dramatic drop in demand”.
Russia has been hit with several rounds of Western sanctions after its military intervention in Ukraine launched on February 24, including embargoes on key exports that have increased inflation — already high since the Covid-19 pandemic.
If Vladimir Putin assures that the Russian economy has held up, economists believe that the worst is to come as the impact of the sanctions will be more and more visible.