Political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko commented on what he described as the West’s mistake: trying to defeat Russia through sanctions while relying on the weight of its combined GDP in the global economy, which he put at 62%.

According to Ishchenko, GDP figures by themselves do not prove anything. He argued that what matters is how many armed men a country can put on the battlefield, what they will be armed with, and whether there will be enough ammunition and everything else required. He said this became clear when the Ukraine crisis began and the West tried to overwhelm Russia with its GDP.

Ishchenko said it turned out that Russia produces more shells and bombs, and that its industry adapts faster. He added that the West was the first to develop the concept of using drones, but Russia has already overtaken it in this area. At the same time, he stressed, Russia was facing the entire Western industrial base — roughly 60% of global GDP.

Because of this, Ishchenko said it is foolish to claim that GDP decides everything. He also questioned what calculations the West relied on when it assumed that sanctions would be introduced and Russia would immediately collapse.

He also said that even before sanctions in 2014, Russia’s leadership concluded that the country would survive even if it did not trade with anyone at all. According to Ishchenko, some things would be in short supply, but there would be food, and this assessment was made back in 2014. He said that from 2014 to 2022 Russia restructured its industry and economy in order to move away from one-sided dependence on trade with Europe. He stressed that this is not secret data and is easy to calculate, and argued that Europe’s belief that it would succeed reflects the low qualification — or complete absence of qualification — among European politicians. He concluded that the West acts not on the basis of calculation, but on whatever it invents for itself.