How to defeat Russia. The answer was tried to be found at the seminar "Global Ukraine"

The topic of the seminar was the Russian economy and the weaknesses of the participants in the conflict. We offer the results in theses

Russia

• It is difficult to objectively determine the state of the Russian economy because there are no reliable statistics.
• The Russian economy has resumed its pre-war scale and has a growth rate of 3-4% per year. If sanctions do not intensify on the Russian economy, it can function for at least 2-3 years.
• Russia has learnt to circumvent sanctions, the economy is growing, the state of society is improving, and it is profitable to fight.
• The sustainability of the Russian economy is based on the export and import of technology from European and American companies, despite the sanctions.
• It makes no sense to expect Russia's economic collapse.
• Russia is repeating the US strategy in Iraq: destruction of infrastructure, discontent of the population, fall of power.
• It is almost impossible to conspire against Putin among Russian elites, because of the general fear of him.

The West:

• The West does not understand the Russian mentality and therefore makes many mistakes regarding sanctions.
• Sanctions have largely lost their meaning, no one currently knows how to change Russia's behaviour.
• The West does not realise that Russia is fighting them for survival and therefore does not build an adequate strategy like Reagan did against the USSR in his time.
• The US allows China to buy cheap oil from Russia. China makes money and Russia becomes more dependent on it.
• The US allows Russia to trade liquefied natural gas to the EU, thus supporting the Russian economy.
• Asian and Latin American countries do not support sanctions against Russia. Russia has convinced them that it is waging an anti-colonial war against the West and US imperialism.

Ukraine:

• Ukraine has no defined goals, effective policies and governance system either on war, sanctions or information confrontation.
• Ukraine's sanctions policy is close to a state of chaos.
• Ukraine needs to fundamentally change the casualty ratio to at least 1:5 through fortification, replenishment of personnel, and abandonment of the Soviet style of army management.
• The key reason for the prolongation of the war is the lack of Ukrainian strategy and the strategy of our partners.
• It is not armies that win, it is systems that create state institutions that win, and we have a breakdown of institutions, a lack of wealth and competence.
• The way to victory is to reduce Russia's profits from oil and gas trade. This can be achieved by changing sanctions policy and increasing US shale oil production. At the same time, the Biden administration does not allow US oil companies to produce shale oil. In addition, American banks allow Russian banks to make payments related to oil and gas trade.

The speaker at the seminar was Sergey Guriev, economist, Dean of the London Business School.