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- Russian TV anchor Dmitry Kiselyov boasted of the health of Russia's economy.
- He said Russia had low unemployment and was doing better than Ukraine.
- But he made no mention of how Russia's invasion of Ukraine impacted those figures.
TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, a bullish ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Sunday boasted about the health of Russia's economy 15 months after the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
In an edition of his show on Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 1, Kiselyov said that it's "always important to visualise the overall proportions" and specifically "the proportions of the Ukrainian economy and how they've changed over the past year," reported BBC Monitoring 's Francis Scarr.
"This is especially important in comparison with Russian figures," he said.
—Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 14, 2023
The spin doctor, known as "Putin's mouthpiece", went on to point to a number of factors he claimed showed that Russia was economically performing better than Ukraine.
He omitted how Russia's invasion has decimated the Ukrainian economy, and boasted that in Russia "unemployment is at an historic low."
Kiselyov didn't mention key facts that point to a more worrying economic and political reality for the Kremlin.
According to economic data in April, Russia is facing a record labor shortage, and thus low unemployment, largely due to the war in Ukraine.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled the country after the invasion, many of whom were working in high-skilled roles, UK military intelligence said last week.
The labor shortage has been exacerbated by the mass mobilisation of working age men to fight in Ukraine, where the Russian military has suffered steep casualty rates, reports say.
In March, the country was losing an estimated 776 soldiers a day, which dropped to 568 in April, according to UK intelligence.
Around 300,00 men were drafted into the Russian military last September, and a new wave of mobilizations is considered likely amid continued setbacks. Added to that is Russia's already declining and ageing population.
In an admission of the labor shortages in key sectors of the economy, the Kremlin excluded men working in professions including banking and IT from last year's draft.
Russia's GDP declined by 2.1% in 2022, which was better than some analysts had predicted in response to western sanctions, and was mainly fueled by high oil and gas prices, Reuters said. But steep inflation meant that disposable incomes fell by 1% in 2022, and are just beginning to increase again, according to the report.
Economic analysts told The Wall Street Journal in March that oil and gas prices would likely fall this year, damaging the Russian economy, which was likely entering a long phase of decline.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/YCZhaVB
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