Many famous acts of aggression, such as the Falklands conflict, are motivated by the need to divert the attention of citizens away from domestic economic problems. So in that sense, Kremlin aggression in Ukraine was unexpected, given that Russia’s economy appeared to be successfully overcoming the pandemic, having regained its pre-Covid-19 level by mid-2021. Conventional wisdom says that a significant portion of Russia’s economy, with an official gross domestic product of $1.65tn in 2021, is unaccounted for. This is because of the large size of the shadow economy, which leads to Russia’s GDP being underestimated. Yet ... (full story)