War will cost Russia 15 years of economic gains, institute says

The ripple effects of Russia’s audacious invasion of Ukraine will wipe out 15 years of economic gains by the end of 2023, a global banking trade group reported Wednesday.

The Institute of International Finance estimated the Russian economy will shrink by 15% this year and another 3% in 2023. Historically high oil and and natural gas prices have provided some protection from global sanctions, and the Russian central bank has raised interest rates and imposed capital controls to keep money from fleeing the country.

Yet the institute said the sanctions, partly by encouraging foreign companies to abandon Russia, “are unraveling its economy, wiping out more than a decade of economic growth, and some of the most meaningful consequences have yet to be felt.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that sanctions have failed to deter Russia’s military ambitions in his country. But sanctions have yet to reach the “top rung of the escalation ladder,” the report says.

Ukraine claims ‘elite’ Russian regiment routed

The Ukraine military claims it routed an elite Russian regiment in the Donbas region amid conflicting reports on the fate of the city of Sievierodonetsk. The “invaders” were trying to cut through a strategically important highway in eastern Ukraine when paratroopers from Ukraine’s 80th Brigade halted the advance, the brigade said in a Facebook post.

“The enemy has not gotten through! Units of the 80th separate paratrooping brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to inflict losses on Russian occupants,” the post claimed. “This ‘striped elite’ retreated, leaving in the forest the bodies of their dead.”

The focus of the war has turned to the eastern Donbas. Russia claims to control 97% of Luhansk. Sievierodonetsk is one of just two Luhansk cities not yet completely under Russian control. Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai told the Associated Press that “maybe we will have to retreat, but right now battles are ongoing in the city.”