The Russian economy has at long last make a decisive turn upwards. After a decade of decline, gross domestic product increased by 3.2 percent last year, and it is rose by an annualized 8 percent in the last quarter last year and first quarter this year. The numbers are clear enough, but everybody has become so pessimistic about Russia that nobody faces up to the positive facts any longer.
Political developments in Russia already have begun to impede the "development of the of the national economy," which, according to the new foreign policy doctrine, should be the "main priority in the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in international economic relations."