In Russia the poor are decreasing, while the middle class is disappearing

Russians are getting poorer, but there are fewer and fewer poor people. Putin has increased transfers to the weakest groups, to the detriment of the middle class which is increasingly thinning: a pre-existing trend accelerated by the war

In addition to the IMF forecasts which estimate a return to growth in Russia in 2023 (+0.3 percent), after the contraction in 2022 (-2.2 percent), there is another surprising fact for the Russian economy . In the third quarter of 2022 about 700 thousand Russians left abject poverty (below the threshold of 180 euros per month) compared to the previous year, from 16 million to 15.3 million people. But how is it possible that poverty decreases in Russia during a recession? Like GDP, which is growing again supported by military industry and public spending but with serious problems in all the other sectors affected by the sanctions, so too the poverty figure hides a critical situation. The solution to the mystery lies in the fact that the poor are decreasing in number, but Russians are poorer overall. In practice, the Russian middle class, which is getting smaller and smaller, is paying.