Andrei Movchan was one of the early post-Soviet bankers but eventually left that world behind. In London now, but still in financial management, he offers his insight and opinions about the effects the economic squeeze is having on Russia, and what it has the potential to achieve. Movchan believes oligarchs don’t have the power to get personalities to change track, and they would be scared to even try. It could be seen in Putin’s eyes, he says, as betrayal.
“Putin is a person who remembers such things. He conflicts” target=”_blank”>values<
Movchan still thinks sanctions were a justified and logical step for the West to take but he fears nothing but escalation on Putin’s side. “He needs to increase the stakes even further to maintain his power. If he loses the war, and the chance of that still exists, he would need to increase the stakes dramatically to maintain his position,” Movchan remarks grimly.
Konstantin Malofeyev, chairman of the board of directors of the Tsargrad media group, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Moscow, Russia Sept. 16, 2021.
(Reuters/Tatyana Makeyeva)
Like many, he predicts further witch-hunts and repressions at home. “I don’t believe that the situation will change. I don’t believe that the war will end soon. I don’t believe that the regime will fall. Russians are not ready to make changes with the regime,” he says. And he says a West, scared of a new Russia that is emerging, “a frightened, mad Russia” is not sure of how to act further but will do its best to contain this Russia to its borders.
The effects of global-economy” target=”_blank”>sanctions< is already there and people are still trying to buy cars and real estate because they still believe that they can protect the value of their investments by buying cost of real estate. We’ll see what happens in the half year, but so far it’s just the beginning of the process.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Roscosmos space agency employees at a rocket assembly factory during his visit to the Vostochny cosmodrome outside the city of Tsiolkovsky, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the city of Blagoveshchensk in the far eastern Amur region Tsiolkovsky , Russia, Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Russia on Tuesday marks the 61th anniversary of Gagarin’s pioneering mission on April 12 1961, the first human flight to orbit that opened the space era.
(Evgeny Biyatov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
I tell Movchan that while I know Moscow well, I am a stranger to large swathes of the vast country and ask him to paint the bigger picture of Russia’s economy. He says the capital accounts for ten percent of the country’s population, sixty percent of the imports Russia brings in, seventy percent of capital construction and eighty percent of its financial business. St. Petersburg accounts for much of the rest of the remaining pie.
“The rest of Russia, is almost nothing in terms of the disasters” target=”_blank”>economy<
Many Russians’ dream is “for their child to become an officer in the Russian army or a tax inspector or a small clerk in the administration of the regions. That’s how they think. That’s the united-nations” target=”_blank”>magnitude<
“All the military aircraft, all the tanks, all the missiles that’s all legacy from the Soviet Union with the old technologies being strictly followed from that time. Russia lost its technological school completely and survives on the legacy of the Soviet Union,” Movchan says. Putin would beg to differ, having showed off a new range of military equipment including hypersonic missiles in recent years. But by Movchan’s argument, if Russia’s arsenal were so much more advanced, Moscow would have achieved much more in its war against Ukraine.
