The price of war: Macroeconomic effects of the 2022 sanctions on Russia

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the US, Europe, and many other countries imposed new economic sanctions on Russia. This column assesses the economic effects of these sanctions using a structural vector auto-regression model of the Russian economy. The findings suggest that industrial production, consumption, and investment will all decline, and that Russian GDP will contract by -12.5% to -16.5% in 2022. Nevertheless, the Russian economy will continue to rely on its existing export model, which may be difficult to undermine, even with potential oil and gas embargoes.