” Russia ? Not even bad…” This is what Vladimir Putin responds in substance, with unwavering confidence, when he talks about the effects of the heavy sanctions decreed by the West since the start of the offensive against Ukraine, in February 2022. “The economy is doing well” and the retaliatory measures against his country – the most sanctioned in the world – have not brought it to its knees, repeats the Russian president, waving the growth figures, with + 3.6% in 2023, according to the national agency of Rosstat statistics and + 2.6% forecast in 2024 by the International Monetary Fund. What does it matter if they are inflated by military spending and say nothing about the state of industry or the daily lives of Russians.
For two years, Moscow has been deploying great know-how to produce more weapons, sell its oil, gas and wheat, obtain semiconductors and manufacture food products. The government mobilized Russian companies, plundered or bought Western companies at low prices, rented “ghost tankers”, created new supply circuits. The country retains the support of neighbors as powerful as China, India, Turkey and Iran while cultivating solid relations with the Gulf petromonarchies.
“A little worried”
The economy of resourcefulness, however inventive it may be, eventually reaches its limits. They appear in the air sector, where Russia will not be able to sell out security without appearing like a banana republic. However, the risk is there. Of some 1,000 commercial aircraft registered in Russia, almost two-thirds are foreign-made; and half came from the Airbus and Boeing chains. This was Mr. Putin’s decision in the early 2000s to replace Tupolev and Ilyushin from the Soviet era, while trying to revive civil aeronautics with the creation of the public holding company United Aircraft Corporation.
But Boeing, Airbus, Embraer or ATR, like the equipment manufacturers Safran, Thalès or Honeywell, have broken with their Russian customers, depriving them of spare parts (tires, landing gear, brakes, etc.), maintenance and upgrade services. update of navigation software. However, air traffic has hardly declined since the sanctions and no disaster can be attributed to the embargo. Planes from Aeroflot, S7 Airlines, Ural Airways and Rossiya still cover the territory’s eleven time zones, a vital presence for the Russian economy, or often fly full to countries that are not “unfriendly”.
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