Russia’s Vladimir Putin appears to be playing dumb to avoid taking the blame for the mounting fallout of his war against Ukraine.
At a meeting with officials on economic issues on Tuesday, the Russian leader stated the obvious, admitting that 2022 had been a “difficult” year for the country. But in the same breath he pointed out that the country’s woes were somehow impossible to predict.
“2022 has been a very challenging year for us and we’ve managed to navigate some of the risks that have largely emerged unexpectedly,” he said, according to RIA Novosti. He went on to say that the Russian government “didn’t know and didn’t understand” the logistical, financial, and budgetary risks in 2022, but that they now “see 2023 better in terms of those risks.”
Weeks before his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to the Financial Times, Putin was repeatedly warned by those close to him that the move would be suicide for the Russian economy.
A year later – and tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians (and Russians) later – and more than 40 percent of foreign companies operating in Russia have left Russia or swore to do so. Russia’s GDP has also fallen by 2.5 percent and hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens have fled the country.
That didn’t stop Putin, however, from patting himself and his government on the back. “We did a very honorable job,” he said on Tuesday.
Lawmakers are now considering how to lure back even exiled Russians and confiscate the property of any Russians who fired a farewell shot as they left the Kremlin because of the war.
“Our task is to do as much as possible to ensure that those who have left return as soon as possible, except for those who have allowed themselves to launch public attacks against our country and the armed forces. This is important for the country’s economy, for their families and loved ones,” MP Andrei Turchak told Russian media on Tuesday.
Earlier, Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the Russian State Duma, called for the creation of a mechanism that would allow the government to confiscate property in the country from all Russians leaving the country and continue to “publicly spill dirt on Russia.”