French President Emmanuel Macron said today, Tuesday, that “the Russian economy is suffering a lot,” adding that he did not believe the official statistics published by Moscow, which he considered “propaganda.”
In response to a question, on the sidelines of a visit to the Rungis market near Paris, about the official figures for the decline in the Russian gross domestic product by 2.1% in the year 2022, the French president said, “They are the ones who say -2%, I think it is much more than that.”
“They make some money from the gas they sell, but the rest of the economy is suffering a lot. So I don’t believe these numbers at all,” Macron added, according to Agence France-Presse.
He said Russian statistics were “propaganda, that (Russia) is no longer a free democratic country with an independent (statistical) institute.”
According to figures issued by the Russian Statistical Agency “Rosstat” on Monday, Russia’s gross domestic product declined by 2.1% in 2022, which made the Russian economy appear more resilient than expected due to the impact of harsh Western sanctions imposed on the country after its invasion of Ukraine.
On the other hand, Macron stressed that “hundreds of thousands of young people … left so as not to be called up” to enlist in the ranks of the army, and that the Russians “lost many opportunities” in economic terms.
