Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his long-awaited annual state of the country cope with on Tuesday, simply days ahead of the one-year anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
In his two-hour-long speech, Putin slammed the West and likewise made a chain of claims.
So what’s true and what’s false? Let’s take a more in-depth have a look at one of the vital statements made by means of the Russian President.
“Russia’s economy withstood Western sanctions”
One of the principle issues of Putin’s speech used to be lauding the Russian economic system. He claimed that Russia’s GDP reduced by means of handiest 2.1% after Western sanctions had been imposed, in line with the rustic’s statistics company, whilst the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted a 12% fall.
It’s true that the share introduced by means of Putin is on the subject of the two.2% estimate within the newest document from the IMF.
However, Russia remains to be the worst-performing nation however the numbers are nowhere on the subject of what professionals predicted.
But some analysts are elevating questions concerning the reliability of the knowledge equipped by means of the Russian government.
“It’s true that experts are waiting for much worse results starting from the beginning of the war,” said Nikolai Petrov, Russia expert at Chatham House.
“It’s also true that the government is cheating. It’s not by chance that the latest figure of very modest decline of Russian GDP came yesterday, although it was supposed to come much earlier. It was designed to present this very positive view of what’s going on in the Russian economy,” he told Euronews.
The IMF’s explanation for the low percentage: Russian trade has been redirected to non-sanctioning countries such as China and India. High oil prices and military spending have also helped the economy.
“The West spent $150 billion on Ukraine but only $60 billion on developing nations”
Another claim Euronews fact-checked is that the West spent more than 150 billion dollars to help Ukraine but the G7 countries only gave 60 billion dollars to the poorest nations in the world between 2020 and 2021.
Looking at different tools including the Ukraine support tracker, we found that it’s true the West has pledged approximately 143.6 billion dollars as of January 2023.
But when looking at the OECD statistics on aid to other developing countries, the president’s statements are far from true.
In 2021, the G7 contribution amounted to approximately 128 billion dollars in aid – more than twice as much as Putin claims.
“Ukrainian Edelweiss brigade is named after a Nazi division”
Finally, Vladimir Putin slammed a brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine called “Edelweiss”, announcing that this title used to be utilized by Nazis all over the Holocaust.
The brigade used to be not too long ago honoured by means of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But a couple of years in the past in Russia, the Internal Troops (which joined the Russian National Guard) additionally had their very own Edelweiss unit, till they modified its title in 2016.
Another Edelweiss unit used to be created as a part of the particular forces of the Altai Republic in Southern Siberia in 1993 and existed a minimum of till 2018.