It's difficult to know the true state of the Russian economy, both because the country's financial reporting is sparse and because official figures are unreliable. But things probably aren't great.

This week, Sweden's minister of foreign affairs, Maria Malmer Stenergard, shared her country's assessment that the Russian economy has likely contracted over the last five years amid the war in Ukraine. Inflation is also high, and international sanctions have cost Russia $450 billion since the onset of the war in February 2022. Russia's economy is currently smaller than that of Texas, Stenergard said.

By most measures, then, the economy is not in tip-top shape. Moreover, the war is draining a large amount of the country's financial resources, with defense spending reaching a post-Soviet record of about 7 percent of government spending.

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