Owen Matthews loses his credibility by parroting idiotic nonsense about Russia's economy

From an extremely small list, Owen Matthews has been one of the more balanced mainstream commentators on the war in Ukraine. Not seeking to take one side over the other, but to step back and look at the bigger picture.

I was shocked, therefore, by his article in the Independent this week.

‘The Russian economy is on the brink of collapse, and Putin knows it,’ ran the headline.

I’ve read a different version of the same headline over a hundred times since 2014, including while serving as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow.

I am still waiting for it to be proved correct.

Firstly, some of the data in Matthews’ article were objectively not correct.

The ‘ruble has lost over half its value since Putin invaded Crimea in 2014.’

Wrong. It is around one third of its spring 2014 value. And as I’ve pointed out many times, a weak ruble has been an explicit article of Russian monetary policy since late 2016, to offset the effect of major energy price swings. That helped Russia pull in record tax receipts in 2022 because of the potent combination of sky high energy prices and rock bottom ruble rate. That’s basic economics.

‘Over $600bn of the Kremlin’s foreign currency reserves have been frozen in Western banks,’

Wrong again. The figure is less than $300bn, and Russia still retains the same value of available reserves, that would cover over a year’s worth of imports.

I could go on but won’t. Matthews is known as an historian, not an economist. I don’t claim to be an economist either, but I can count.

In broad terms, I don’t dispute the economic headwinds that Matthews points to, albeit clumsily. Domestic labour constraints driven by the war and Russia’s secular population decline are a problem. Massive fiscal stimulus is overheating the economy with inflation high. Although I’d argue that 9% isn’t ‘rampant’; one million percent in Venezuela is rampant.

However, Russia has been here before. Inflation breached the 9% mark in November 2014 following the oil price collapse, and didn’t fall below that level until early 2016. It peaked again at the start of the war in Ukraine hitting 18%. Interest rates in Russia now are extremely high at 21% but, again, they were hiked to 17% in December 2014.

It isn’t incorrect for Matthews to point out these legitimate economic challenges. The point is that neither inflation nor interest rates will ever be a strong enough reason for President Putin to change course in Ukraine.

Not now, not in 2014, not at any point since the Ukraine crisis started. He has always chosen to accept economic pain and manage the political consequences of that, to avoid backing down in the face of western economic pressure.

Like so many mainstream pundits, Matthews briefly sketches the economic fix Ukraine is in before hurrying along as if there’s ‘nothing to see here’.

Conveniently, he doesn’t explore the mathematics of how Europe will pay to keep the lights on in Kyiv while also funding Von der Leyen’s $800bn rearmament programme.

Nor has he considered what this would mean for ordinary European citizens who increasingly question the wisdom of funding a forever war that Ukraine cannot win.

Or considered the link between self-defeating war policy of identikit globalist European leaders and the rise in the popularity of anti-war nationalist parties all across Europe.

Owen Matthews doesn’t touch on Ukraine’s looming sovereign default and the collapse of its currency that would follow. Or the concern that, with a structural current account deficit, Ukraine has no way to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, other than, you guessed it, through western state handouts. Nor how the immense cost of bailing Ukraine out would fall on Europe on top of the contingent liabilities already enumerated above.

Rather, Matthews suggests that Europe needs to do more of what it has been doing for the past eleven years without success. More sanctions, even though over 90% of individual sanctions have absolutely no effect.

He doesn’t reflect on the fact that Russia has been under sanctions for eleven straight years, is the most sanctioned country on the planet, and yet is still growing faster than Europe, even though that growth is undoubtedly built on fiscal sand.

Yet still, finally and irrevocably, he suggests Europe could cut itself off completely from Russian gas.

No need to dwell on the obvious economic truth that higher-cost energy in Europe is driven by a huge imbalance between supply and demand that neither the US nor Russia experiences.

No thought given to the notion that Europe’s deindustrialisation has been accelerated by the political choice to cut off 90% of piped Russian gas supplies.

As every other mainstream British pundit has called for more sanctions and less gas, Owen Matthews has plumped for the easy option too.

Presumably to show some value-added in his low-calorie commentary, Owen Matthews supports Ukrainian drone attacks on any energy infrastructure that facilitates the delivery of Russian gas to Europe.

Clearly impressed by the destruction of the NordStream pipeline, like a spotty-faced teenager watching a Seventies Bond movie, he considers industrial terrorism to be a legitimate policy choice for western leaders.

I would like to say that his article was terrible. But in truth, it was no different from practically every other mainstream British Glavlit proclamation on Russia’s economy that I’ve seen over the past eleven years.

And, the thing is, it isn’t that it was littered with data that was objectively untrue.

It was not the lack of economic analysis, or the failure to explore the greater economic challenge facing Ukraine.

It was not, even, the crass and frankly dangerous policy prescriptions.

It was that, like so many other journalists I had thought weaker, Owen Matthews was missing the point. Badly, irresponsibly, and idiotically, missing the point.

Despite the very clear economic challenges that Russia does face because of the war in Ukraine, its economy will always be better placed to manage the shock of war than Ukraine’s.

Every argument to punish Russia more will only embolden Putin to keep fighting.

Yet, in this war of attrition, it has always been obvious that Ukraine, and Europe, will run out of money first. And with Trump turning off the taps of US funding, that crunch point will come sooner.