“They were brave enough to ask for a meeting with him. But they couldn’t get their message across to Putin,” the newspaper’s source said.
The president of the Russian bank Sberbank German Gref (the largest Russian bank) and the governor of the Central bank of Russia Elvira Nabiulina about a month before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, tried to convey to the Russian president Vladimir Putin their assessment that the attack may have “disastrous consequences” for the Russian economy, writes the newspaper Financial Times citing her own sources.
In her article entitled How Putin’s technocrats saved the economy to fight a war they opposed(“How Putin’s Technocrats Saved the Economy to Service the War They Opposed“), it is reported that Gref and Nabiulina met personally with Putin at his residence in Novo Agaryovo and presented him with a 39-page report, in which they predicted that Western countries would impose sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, who are able to turn the Russian economy back decades.
In particular Gref warned of the possibility of GDP falling by 30% within two years and of a sharp increase in inflation as well as a fall in the standard of living of Russians.
According to the FT’s sources, Putin interrupted Gref and asked what needed to be done to avoid the worst consequences.
However, the heads of Sberbank and the Central Bank could not clearly tell the president that he should not pursue escalation with Ukraine.
“They were brave enough to ask for a meeting with him. But they were unable to convey to Putin their message“, said the source of the newspaper.
As the newspaper writes FT Putin did not speak directly to his interlocutors about his plans and the start of the war was informed “from the television”.
The newspaper claims that the so-called technocrats were “devastated” that the president did not listen to their words.
“I’ve never seen Gref in this state. He was completely lost, in a state of complete shocksaid one of the newspaper’s interlocutors.
He himself characterized Gref “cosmopolitan” who “loved going to forums, conferences and meetings” and “was in Silicon Valley all the time”. “He was friends with Jack Ma. And now he’s an outcastsays the FT’s source, who used to work with Gref.
Nevertheless, neither Gref nor Nabiulina resigned. On the contrary, as the FT writes, they made a lot of efforts so that the Russian economy could endure after the imposition of the harsh sanctions that they themselves had foreseen.
The representatives of the persons mentioned in the article have not yet commented on the publication.
Gref was included in the sanctions list of almost all Western countries.
Nabiulina was not on these lists for some time, but in the fall, the USA and Canada included her in the sanctions.
Russia’s GDP based on the results of 2022 will decrease by a few percentage points, the country is experiencing an increase in inflation and a decrease in the world’s real incomes.
However, the harshest scenarios, which were even talked about in the above-mentioned report-presentation of Gref, have so far not been realized.
RES-EMP
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