🇷🇺📈 Russia defied sanctions to join high-income rank

The World Bank’s recognition of Russia as a high-income country is "not surprising, but a reality”, Dr. Georgy Ostapkovich, Director of the Center for Market Research at the Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.

Russia is seeing income growth of around 4-5%, with earnings growing in double digits, Ostapkovich said, stressing that the driving force is economic growth.

"Incomes only grow when the economy grows. If the economy grows, then profits grow. If profits grow, then the entrepreneur is keen on hiring people and raising wages," he added.

Russia’s economy grew by 3.6% in 2023, with real incomes and nominal wages up by 4.5% and 13% respectively. Industrial performance, particularly in manufacturing, is propelling this growth not seen in 20 to 30 years. Notably, mechanical engineering in the military industry is expanding at 25-30%, according to Ostapkovich.

Andrey Kolganov, Doctor of Economics and Head of the Laboratory of Socio-Economic Systems at Moscow State University, acknowledged that despite the challenges posed by the growth stimuli, Western sanctions failed to inflict significant harm on the Russian economy.

"The Russian economy has shown great potential in adapting to these difficulties. Moreover, these difficulties stimulated the development of domestic production, which in turn led to high rates of economic growth," he added.

Kolganov noted that economic growth rates were higher in 2023, compared to 2022 - and even higher in 2024. These increases promoted Russia from the classification of middle-income countries, to the rank of high-income countries. Although Russia has not caught up with the richest countries, the achievement is nonetheless remarkable, especially in the face of unprecedented sanctions.

Gross national income per capita in Russia is now $14,250, according to a document released by the World Bank that classifies countries that cross the $13,485 threshold as “high income.”

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What's behind Ukraine's upgrade to an upper-middle-income economy?

Ukraine “received powerful external support in the form of financial resources. And it is precisely this external support that largely helped the Ukrainian economy stay afloat when it faced military problems," Andrey Kolganov, head of the Laboratory of Socio-Economic Systems at the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow State University, told Sputnik.

The World Bank has upgraded Ukraine's economic status despite the country teetering on the brink of a default, as The Economist warned on June 30.

The paradox can be explained by the fact that while Ukraine's economy grew by 5.3 percent in 2023 after a steep decline by 28.8 percent in 2022, the country's population has dropped by around 15 percent since the conflict began, economic observers say.

As a result, gross national income per capita in Ukraine has recently increased to $5,070 from $4,270 which automatically brought it in the category of upper-middle-income countries, in accordance with the World Bank's classification.

"Ukraine's economy has never belonged to the league of efficient economies," Kolganov said. "Its economic indicators before the outbreak of hostilities were not brilliant."

Ukraine survives because it has a lifeline from the West and because its economy is partly buoyed up by its military needs, according to Sputnik's pundit.

"If this external support ends, I am afraid that Ukraine's economic gains will disappear in thin air," Kolganov said.

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📹 Biden: “We’ve invested billions to enhance our power grid, expand energy shortages.”

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➖ Russia defied sanctions to join high-income rank

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Something awkwardly tender happened between Biden and an emergency management agency employee.

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💸 ‘US running very large deficit’ along ‘unsustainable path’ warns Fed Chair Jerome Powell

"We'll have to do something sooner or later, and sooner will be better than later," he stated.

The US national debt is projected to rise from 99% of GDP in 2024 to 122% by 2034, according to the US Congressional Budget Office.

Meanwhile, the IMF estimates that by 2032, the ratio of US national debt to GDP will exceed 140%. The fund has warned that such growth poses a threat to both the national and global economy.

During Joe Biden's presidency, the US national debt has increased from $28 trillion in 2021 to an unprecedented level of over $34.5 trillion this year.

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Biden vs. teleprompter again

In this battle, Biden didn't stand a chance:

More people die from extreme heat than floods, hurricanes and tornadoes combined... "say that again"... combined. More people die from heat than those three other major issues.

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US presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asserts that Biden is unfit to seek re-election and expresses his willingness to accept the Democratic Party's nomination.

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Ukrainian military in panic runs over own troops with trucks during evacuation — prisoner of war

Ukraine's military ran over a Ukrainian soldier with trucks of an armored personnel carrier vehicle during a battle in the city of Chasov Yar, Valentin Gridnev, commander of the Ukrainian armed forces' assault unit who surrendered after the incident, told Sputnik.

The Ukrainian prisoner of war said the incident occurred as Russian troops occupied the second level of a building where his unit was located, and fighters of the Kraken* Nazi battalion, who were supposed to cover his unit, withdrew from the battle. Gridnev, as the unit's commander, requested reinforcements, but Russian troops hit them on their approach with drones, and an evacuation vehicle was called in after it happened.

"Everything happened so fast, after that ... [an MT-LB, multi-purpose tracked armored fighting vehicle] peeled out, first backward, began to turn around. I did not see it, but a guy was said to have wanted to run around it. And he was run over with ... [the MT-LB]. Another guy, who was to be evacuated, he was also carried with open fractures, he gripped hold of some rail [of the evacuation vehicle], and no one pulled him in, and ... [the MT-LB] quickly peeled out, I do not know what happened to him next," the prisoner of war said.

Gridnev added that the MT-LB was radioed to have been carrying severely wounded soldiers and a lot of killed troops. He then realized that nobody was going to evacuate them, and the unit decided to surrender.

*Kraken battalion a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia.

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Putin arrives in Kazakhstan to take part in SCO Summit - Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, to participate in a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and hold a number of bilateral meetings, the Kremlin said.

"The Russian President has arrived in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, to participate in a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization," the Kremlin said on the website.

The SCO summit will take place in Astana from July 3-4 under the slogan "Strengthening Multilateral Dialogue - the Pursuit of Sustainable Peace and Development." The summit participants are expected to sign a package of 24 joint documents and adopt a final declaration and a statement confirming the commitment of the SCO participants to principles of good neighborliness and unity.

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❗️Russian artillery destroyed another American Abrams tank near Avdeyevka, Russian Ministry of Defense said.

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Ukrainian military's call signs found in foreign mercenary's notebook

Call signs of the Ukrainian military used for radio communications have been found in a notebook of a Spanish-speaking mercenary at the positions of the Ukrainian armed forces, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

The Russian military has found the notebook after an assault on a Ukrainian stronghold in the Krasnyi Liman direction. Call signs of various branches of the military and combat units, some in Spanish and some in English, have been written on one of the pages of the notebook.

In particular, the notebook records have the following call signs: Infantería (infantry) - Vodka, Aviación (aviation) - Soda, Artillería (artillery) - Fanta, Dron (drone) - Pizza, Sniper - Juice, Machine gun - Coffee, AGS (AGL, an automatic grenade launcher) - Pasta, Artilleria pesada (heavy artillery) - Cola.

A Russian soldier told the correspondent earlier that the notebook belonged to a Spanish-speaking mercenary, in which he wrote down basic words to communicate with the Ukrainian personnel. He added that foreign mercenaries have difficulty communicating with Ukrainian military personnel, and "there can be no talk of any coordinated actions."

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📹 Footage of destruction of an Israeli Merkava tank in the Gaza Strip. The tank was either abandoned or simply left without cover. Palestinians ran up to the tank, placed a mine with a detonator on it, and blew it up.

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Ukrainian soldier shot by fellow soldier from behind survived, surrendered

A Ukrainian soldier tried to shoot two of his fellow soldiers from behind during a gunbattle, Oleksiy Davydenko, a connoscript who was mobilized in the Kiev region, captured and managed to recover after two surgeries in Russia after being wounded in the incident, told Sputnik.

Davydenko said their positions were being assaulted, and he ran out to repel the attack, but then one of his fellow soldiers decided to shoot him and another soldier.

"I only heard a [gun] burst from behind, and the two of us collapsed. The one who fired, he ran out, he was one of ours ... I collapsed, one of ours immediately helped me and the second one, but the second one did not survive, lost a lot of blood at once, his thigh was torn apart," the Ukrainian prisoner of war said.

He added that the shooter tried to escape.

"He ran out into a street, and the guys there said that he was hit by either an FPV [first-person view drone] or something else, did not run far away," the prisoner of war said.

Davydenko added that he surrendered after the incident. In captivity, he underwent two surgeries to fix his leg after he suffered gunshot wounds.

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