Russia's GDP grew by 32%, with a projected growth of 3% for the full year 2023. This significantly exceeded market expectations and outperformed the economic growth of the eurozone countries. This gives Russia the confidence to continue to fight the Russian-Ukrainian war, and Putin has enough capital to continue to participate in the 2024 elections. Now the frequent foreign visits reflect the fact that Russia's Putin has gone through the most difficult moment. Russia is obviously slowly adjusting itself and gradually adapting to the new international situation and development trend after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
It seems to be the tradition of the Russian army to suppress first and then promote. Since the time of Tsarist Russia, judging from every major war, the performance of the Soviet Russian army has basically had a process of first suppressing and then rising. They were all fought with confidence, but it was basically difficult for the war to proceed smoothly. The Tsarist army, the Soviet army, and even the current Russian army, are all this virtue. The Russo-Japanese War, the Crimean War, and the Soviet-Finnish War all seemed to follow the same path. Either it will be an eventual defeat, or it will be a crushing victory at great cost in a dominant situation.
This Russian-Ukrainian war, Russia is also full of confidence to end within a week and a month, and completely wants to change the Kyiv regime, the result is a protracted war that is almost two years, and the Russian army has paid huge losses. But Russia is clearly not going to fall easily, and after continuous stress testing, Russia has slowly found a way to survive in the current situation, although it still cannot win quickly, but it is slowly changing from passive to active.
Russia, which is rich in resources, has a strong capacity to adapt. As a global power, Russia has a vast territory, a large population, strong self-sufficiency, and has also inherited the powerful military and armed forces of the Soviet Union. A large number of sanctions imposed by Western countries, it is said that there are tens of thousands of sanctions, which will indeed have an impact on the Russian economy at the beginning, but Russia has a strong ability to adapt and adapt, and can hedge various risks relatively quickly, so it will naturally slowly establish a new model of internal development and external communication.
Judging from the current situation, Russia has a new path in domestic economic development and international development, and the destructive power of sanctions is slowly weakening. The G7 countries want to include Russian diamond exports in the new sanctions, which is actually a manifestation of the lack of skill, indicating that the effectiveness of the previous sanctions has been greatly reduced. Sanctioning a temporary export of only $4 billion a year will obviously not have much impact on Russia.
Changes in the international situation are in favor of Russia. The outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has in fact distracted the attention of the international community from the Russian-Ukrainian war, thereby reducing Russia's strategic and war pressure. And as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drags on for two months, Western countries have become unable to aid Israel and Ukraine at the same time. The United States is even more due to the dispute between domestic political parties, and the funds for aid to Ukraine are stuck in Congress. It has also been difficult for European countries to pay their military aid commitments to Ukraine on time, and Ukraine is in a situation of isolation. The changes in the international situation are indeed beneficial to Russia, and this is also the effect of Russia's initial policy of delaying and waiting for changes.
In fact, the Russian-Ukrainian war is still very variable, and both Russia and Ukraine are facing practical difficulties, but at least Russia has survived the most difficult stage. The future trend will depend more on the strength of Western countries' support for Ukraine.