The IMF expects the world economy to grow 2.9% in 2023 — which is better than its October forecast of 2.7%.
Growth is expected to be supported by strong labor markets and household consumption, and China’s reopening.
The IMF also expects Russia’s economy to grow 0.3% — a reversal from its contraction of 2.2% in 2022.
5 of Russia’s biggest blunders throughout Putin’s war in Ukraine
Russia’s military has little to show for itself after 10 months of fighting in Ukraine.
US and Western officials have widely denounced Putin’s campaign as a “failure.”
Here are some of Moscow’s biggest blunders and mistakes throughout the war.
After 300 days of fighting in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military has little to show for its efforts.
Putin expected his forces to capture Kyiv in a matter of days after launching a full-scale invasion on February 24. In recent months, Ukrainian forces have liberated thousands of square miles of territory — including the only regional capital that Russian forces managed to capture.
Russia’s campaign has been widely denounced by US and Western officials as a “failure,” and it now faces estimates of more than 100,000 casualties — a toll that continues to rise.
From Russia’s botched invasion to Putin’s miscalculation of the Western response, here are some of the biggest mistakes Moscow has made during its unprovoked war in Ukraine.
Screwing up the invasion
Once Putin announced the assault, it didn’t take long for his military to make mistakes.
Military analysts have told Insider that Russia completely botched its initial invasion for a variety of reasons and that its campaign has been riddled with miscalculations, poor communication, and widespread confusion.
“We would have thought that they would have done a much more deliberate, well-thought-through operation. That is not what they did,” Jeffrey Edmonds, a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses and former CIA military analyst, told Insider in a recent interview.
During the early days of the war, Russian forces were expected to combine air support with a ground assault and advance with large groups of artillery, armor, and troops.
Instead of leading with a substantial air campaign and gaining superiority over Ukraine, Russian commanders just instructed their troops to drive to Kyiv. They quickly faced logistical headaches, isolation, and ambushes.
“The Kremlin simply miscalculated and expected the Ukrainian military to collapse far quicker than it has,” Mason Clark, the lead Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Insider in February, adding that it “led to a lot of dumb Russian mistakes.”
Overlooking the strength of Ukraine’s defense
Putin assumed victory would be quick and easy and that his forces would capture Kyiv in a matter of days. But the city of nearly 3 million people never fell, as the Russian leader greatly underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight and defend its homeland.
Ukraine’s fierce resistance was on display very early in the war. A senior US defense official said on February 28 that Ukraine was putting up a “very stiff and very effective defense” around Kyiv, which helped slow Russian advances.
Clark told Insider that Russia’s lack of success was caused by a mix of poor execution and the Ukrainian military performing better and with “much higher morale than anyone, most importantly the Russians, anticipated.”
US and Western intelligence agencies had assessed that Kyiv would not be able to withstand Russia’s assault for very long, but Ukrainian forces fended it off and, in recent months, stunned Moscow by liberating thousands of square miles of territory in two counteroffensives in northeastern and southern Ukraine.
Abandoning lots of weapons
Ukraine’s surprise counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region in late summer surprised Russia and marked the start of a massive push that liberated thousands of square miles of captured territory.
The speed of the offensive sent Russian forces scrambling from their positions, leaving mountains of weaponry and ammunition.
The abandoned hardware even helped restore Ukraine’s dwindling firepower, though so much was left behind that Ukrainian forces struggled to handle it all.
The British Ministry of Defense said at the time that some Russian troops “fled in apparent panic” and left lots of “high-value equipment” behind.
Expending its stockpiles of precision munitions
In recent months, Russia has launched waves of missile and drone attacks targeting Ukraine’s civil infrastructure, but doing so has depleted Moscow’s stockpiles of long-range precision munitions.
Military experts and officials have said the terror campaign was not a sustainable use of Russia’s limited capabilities and was unlikely to affect Ukraine’s will to fight.
More recently, senior US intelligence officials have said Russia is burning through its munitions faster than it can replace them. Officials also say the use of massive amounts of artillery and precision-guided munitions has forced Moscow to turn to Iran and North Korea for supplies.
The UK’s permanent representative to the UN said on December 9 that Russia was looking to obtain “hundreds” of ballistic missiles from Iran in exchange for “unprecedented” military support. Days later, a senior US military official said Russia was running out of new artillery shells and rockets and may have to use older, less reliable ammunition.
Underestimating Western unity
One of Putin’s most significant blunders was underestimating Western unity behind Ukraine.
NATO and the European Union have remained relatively united in providing military aid and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and in applying sweeping sanctions against Russia.
The invasion also created an opportunity for NATO to expand — which Putin has vehemently opposed for decades — by adding Sweden and Finland, which like other European countries are now more concerned about their security.
Some countries have even reversed longstanding foreign, domestic, financial, and military policies as a result of the war.
6/6 SLIDES
The world economy may actually not be as bad as it seems, the International Monetary Fund said Monday, as it upped its global growth forecast to 2.9% in 2023.
While that’s still slower than the pace of growth in 2022 at 3.4%, it’s an improvement from the IMF’s October forecast of a 2.7% rise. Strong labor markets, increased household consumption and business investment, and China’s economic reopening from the COVID-19 pandemic, all contribute to the cheery outlook.
Load Error
“We’re well away from any kind of global recession marker,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, told Bloomberg on Tuesday.
“This time around, the global economic outlook hasn’t worsened. That’s good news, but not enough. The road back to a full recovery, with sustainable growth, stable prices, and progress for all, is only starting,” Gourinchas also wrote in a Monday blogpost.
The IMF highlighted India and China as bright spots in the global economy. The two countries account for half of global growth in 2023, Gourinchas added in his blogpost. The US and Euro-zone will collectively account for just one-tenth of growth.
And it also seemed surprisingly upbeat about the Russian economy — it expects the economy to grow, even amid sweeping sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine war and a $60 a barrel price cap for its crude oil exports — suggesting the restrictions are not that effective.
The IMF expects Russia’s economy to expand 0.3% in 2023 and 2.1% in 2024 — a stark reversal from an expected 2.2% contraction in 2022. The IMF had predicted in October that Russia’s economy would contract by 3.4% in 2022.
“At the current oil price cap level of the Group of Seven, Russian crude oil export volumes are not expected to be significantly affected, with Russian trade continuing to be redirected from sanctioning to non-sanctioning countries,” according to the IMF.
The fund told Reuters that Russia’s economy was supported by a “fairly high” export revenue in 2022 and robust fiscal stimulus in part from military spending.
However, the country is still expected to post a a decline in growth in the medium term due to the Ukraine war, Petya Koeva-Brooks, deputy director of the IMF’s research department, told the news agency.
