Joe Biden claimed Russia’s economy would be “cut in half”, while Boris Johnson spoke of squeezing it “piece by piece.”
A year has passed, but that great promise has been slow to deliver.
“The Russian economy and system of government have turned out to be much stronger than the West believed,” President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to the country’s parliament on Tuesday.
He was also flexing his muscles at an economic cabinet meeting last month: “Remember, some of our experts here in the country – I’m not even talking about Western experts – thought [gross domestic product] would fall by 10%, 15%, even 20%.”
