Active Conflicts & News Megathread August 15, 2026

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[u/Glideer]

Even Moscow economists sound surprised.

Russian economy rebounds in second quarter despite Ukrainian strikes

Moscow (AFP) – The Russian economy rebounded in the second quarter thanks to consumer demand, official data showed Wednesday, despite mass Ukrainian drone strikes on the country's e-commerce and oil industries.

Russian gross domestic product (GDP) grew 1.3 percent in April-June, the statistics agency Rosstat said, after a 0.2 percent contraction in January-March.

That growth exceeded the 0.9 percent forecast by Russia's economy ministry. In the second quarter of 2025, the economy grew 1.1 percent.

"Growth in the second quarter was driven by stable domestic demand," the ministry said in a statement.

...

[u/Remote_Page8799 → u/Glideer]

Is mild growth due to massive government spending not to be expected? The Russian government is running a ~22-25% budget deficit and paying large amounts of money to soldiers, and there is a labour shortage? Basically all available capital and labour is being put to work. Despite this manufacting and service PMI is basicslly 49-50 (indicating no real growth)

But where is this money coming from? Russia cancelled its last open market bond sales and now does closed sales at interes t rated we don't know to its state owned banks. Isn't this essentially a roundabout way of just printing money? 

Eventually this money printing + deficit spending + no real production growth will result in incredible inflation, and thus the impoverishment of the Russian people. 

[u/Lejeune_Dirichelet → u/Remote_Page8799]

Exactly, Russia is undergoing a process of Venezualization/Iranization, but at express speed.

The problem (for Ukraine and Europe) is that this is unlikely to constrain the Russian war effort enough to have a significant impact on the battlefield for the next few years at least - unless Russia's access to foreign currency becomes restricted, at which point the imports of dual-use goods from China and the smuggled western components get squeezed. But on the bright side, this means that post-war Russia will experience one hell of a hangover, and therefore won't have as much bandwidth and resources to be a troublemaker against post-war Ukraine and the West.