I assume when you say "politically" you include the ongoing war in Ukraine. I think it's a huge factor in this context, given its impact and the risks it presents to folks (especially young men) who choose to remain in Russia.
By some estimates, 900K people have left Russia since the invasion [1], of whom 100K were IT specialists leaving in 2022 alone [2] (I haven't looked at the figures since then). I think that's a pretty strong indication of the sentiment.
And wrt the economy, didn't the Central Bank just increase the benchmark rate to 21% [3] (with another 2% hike widely expected in December)?
In Russia programmers working at accredited IT-companies are safe from mobilization [0]
> I think that's a pretty strong indication of the sentiment.
Some left following their western employers, some fled from the mobilization in 2022.
>And wrt the economy, didn't the Central Bank just increase the benchmark rate to 21%
It did, that's why I said 'mostly'. Kremlin is pumping money into defense industry and into payments to contract soldiers, the Central Bank is doing what it can to curb the inflation. Overall it hasn't affected the life much.
I'm Russian, I used to be a programmer at an accredited company, and I still wouldn't be safe from the draft because I have no university education. (For me personally this is a moot point because I left Russia, but still.)
That's the immediate result. But what about later, when the war is over? Military expense is non-productive, economically it's the same as just giving people money for free while they are sitting on the couch (nobody is killed in the latter case though).
Military overspending literally killed Soviet Union, and people returning from Afghanistan war made guaranteed the unforgettable social climate after that. I don't see any reason to be bullish on Russia, even if Trump now gives up Ukraine for Putin.
To give a bit more context to protomolecule's replies: back in 2022 every analyst was predicting total collapse of the Russian economy within a year or thereabouts. This didn't happen. So, we now tend not to believe the doomsayers at all. (And I'm not saying we're right! Just trying to explain the biases in play right now.)
The ones I was reading emphasised the need for a strong sanctions regime with penalties for third party workarounds, with the reasoning given that Russia had prepared its economy for war and already isolated it to some extent.
Maybe your typical cable TV talking head pundit might’ve been confident about Russia’s economy collapsing, but the actual professional analysts and civil servants who advise governments were much more cautious.
