Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the summit of the BRICS group of nations in South Africa in August “by mutual agreement”, South Africa’s presidency said on Wednesday.
“By mutual agreement, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will not attend the summit, but the Russian Federation will be represented by Foreign Minister Mr [Sergey] Lavrov,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for President Cyril Ramaphosa, said in a statement.
South Africa faced a dilemma in hosting the summit because, as a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March for alleged war crimes, it would theoretically be required to arrest him if he were to attend.
The dilemma led to intense debate in South Africa and the West about whether the warrant would be executed, given South Africa’s stance of neutrality on the war in Ukraine and Pretoria’s historic ties to the Kremlin.
In 2015, South Africa also failed to arrest then-Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who was also the subject of an ICC warrant.
The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa will attend the summit, the presidency said.
BRICS, a bloc of emerging economic powers comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China was formed in 2019 as BRIC. South Africa joined the following year after an invitation from China, expanding the group.
Ethiopia, Iran and Argentina have also applied to join the bloc.
Pretty copypasta you have here. But there’s a lot of obvious bullshit - I admit I didn’t even bother reading it in full, but:
I’m not sure where that article got those numbers, but we can check IMF report now to see that prediction for russia is 0.7% in 2023 and 1.3% for 2024. For USA that’s 1.6% and 1.1% respectively. Yet somehow that article claims, that:
First of all. This is at best sign of some recovery after -2.1% “growth” russia was experiencing last year. Compared to USA 2.1% growth last year. (notice the absence of minus sign there) So even percentage-wise this does not even place russia at the beginning of 2022. Remember that these add up. Meanwhile over these 3 years (if predictions are accurate) USA will see almost 5% increase.
Now overall that is still moot point ignoring the biggest elephant in the room that is the absolute size of the economies. The russian nominal GDP is about $2.2 trillion while USA is 10x bigger at around $25 trillion. So that 5% increase for USA means almost $1.3 trillion increase in absolute numbers. In other words USA’s GDP (according to these predictions) will increase by almost half of entire russian GDP.
I’m not saying that russia is on verge of collapsing economically. Personally I’d say it will collapse politically before that. But that article is pure misinformation.
Thoughts on Russian and Chinese demographic trends over the last decade?
No idea. It might be the perfect match to be honest. Russia will have lack of men due to war, China already has lack of women due to 1 child policy… (Just kind of joking, I really have no idea)
Lol lets see that political collapse source then, I provided many and you’ve got none for this narritive you have put forth. In fact the quelling of the Pringles revolt has galvanized the Russian political scene in favor of Putin.
You provided fairytales about russian economy overtaking USA not sources.
Publication: Global Economic Prospects, June 2023
" In Russia, the contraction this year is envisaged to be milder than initially forecast, partially due to the continued flow of energy exports"
“In the United States, growth is expected to weaken significantly through 2023 and early 2024, mainly as a result of the lagged effects of the sharp rise in policy rates over the past year”
“Growth is forecast to strengthen in 2023, to rates higher than projected in January, mainly reflecting developments in the regions’ [second] largest economy—the Russian Federation.”
" Output in Russia is projected to contract less than anticipated in January mainly due to more resilient-than-expected oil production and higher- than-expected growth momentum from 2022"
“Increases in U.S. interest rates associated with inflation or reaction shocks should lead to more adverse spillovers because rising interest rates would coincide with weakening U.S. economic activity and dampened investor sentiment.”
"The recent moderation in U.S. yields since the onset of U.S. banking sector stress appears to reflect negative real shocks amid heightened risk aversion and expectations of slower U.S. growth. "
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6e892b75-2594-4901-a036-46d0dec1e753/content
Right, now if you stop cherrypicking sentences that fit your agenda and just look at the numbers, for 2022-2024, the prediction is for russia to have negative growth of -1.1% while for USA this all adds up to 4% growth.
And again, all of the previous stuff about sizes of economy applies.
Never once did I claim that the Russian economy would overtake the United states simply that the 2023 growth projections were higher for Russia than the United States. I will say you are correct regarding the size and cumulative natures of GDP growth, but add the caveat that this Russian economy growth is in spite of sanctions and removal from the SWIFT banking system.
I’ll quote my original post:
https://www.newsweek.com/russias-economy-forecast-outperform-us-within-two-years-1777788
That’s higher than the IMF’s projection for the United States, which it said would see only 1 percent GDP growth that year, and down from a predicted 1.4 percent in 2023, and the 2 percent the U.S. enjoyed in 2022.
https://tradingeconomics.com
www.statista.com
I’ll again ask for any support to your claim that Russia will collapse politically
https://tass.com/society/1607641
I acknowledge the bias with tass
https://www.specialeurasia.com/2023/06/24/putin-wagner-crisis-power/
The article you shared did, which I pointed out. I’m disputing your article, I’m not saying you wrote it. Not sure where you came with that idea.
Higher in what sense? Comparing percentual growth of two economies that are not even in the same league is misleading at best. Somalia has predicted growth of 3.7% in 2024. What does that say compared to russia? Nothing really. It makes as much sense comparing percentual growth of US economy to russia’s. USA could drop to 0.5% growth and russia could achieve whooping 5% growth and in actual absolute numbers, the US economy would still grow faster.
By “claim” you probably mean my personal opinion which I declared as such?
I feel like you’re just making up some non-existing claims and then keep disputing them. I have no time for that.
That is fine I don’t have time to chase moving goalposts
The claim was that Russia’s economy is on the verge of collapse. The data presented shows that a longer forecast predicts a strengthening economy for Russia and a worsening economy for the US. You don’t have to like Russia, but the data does not support the idea that it’s about to collapse. If it does end up collapsing, it will be a statistical anomaly.
This does not affect the overall percentage growth in the period being worse for Russia then the US. Russia invaded a country with a powerful military just after a global pandemic, and soon faced economic sanctions from the then-biggest economic bloc in the world. The fact that Russia’s economy took a hit is not in question. The question is whether the hit was enough to collapse it’s economy. Apparently, the answer is, no.
I have never claimed that russian economy is about to collapse. In fact if you scroll up the thread I actually said that I don’t think it will. So I’m not sure why you felt like disputing that in reply to my comment.
I have lived through one such collapse already. Russia collapsing is statistical inevitability. 😂(this is joke BTW, you don’t need to dispute it)
The comment to which Carcosa initially responded states:
Hence:
Right, so we can agree that neither of us claims that russia is on the verge of economic collapse.