INVESTIGATION: Russia's War Economy Reaches Its Limits — What the Kiel Report Says

INVESTIGATION: Russia's War Economy Reaches Its Limits — What the Kiel Report Says

Introduction: The mirage of the Russian fortress begins to crack

The Kiel Report No. 9 — a documented alarm bell

Since 2022, one narrative has dominated discussions about Russia's economic resilience: Putin is holding, the sanctions are not working, the ruble is surviving, Russia's war economy is more robust than expected. This narrative was not entirely wrong — and it served as a convenient justification for those who wanted to reduce support for Ukraine by arguing that Western sanctions were ineffective anyway. But the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, in its Report No. 9 of June 2026, a document of intellectual rigor and honesty that commands respect, paints a radically different picture: Russia's war economy has reached its limits. And limits, when they arrive, arrive fast.

The report's title leaves no room for interpretation: "Endgame — Russia's War Economy Hits Its Limits." "Endgame." This is not the usual language of an economic research institute. It is the language of researchers who have spent four years documenting a trajectory and have arrived at a conclusion they consider sufficiently solid to name clearly. This clarity deserves to be heard and amplified — because it changes the framework within which we must understand the war in Ukraine and the choices that the West must now make.

What "the war economy has reached its limits" means

When the Kiel Institute says that Russia's war economy has reached its limits, it is pointing to precise indicators: the depletion of foreign currency reserves, the collapse of oil and gas revenues, a budget deficit that exceeded its annual target in the first quarter of 2026, and labor shortages reaching record levels across all sectors. These limits do not mean immediate collapse — Russia will not fall tomorrow. But they mean that Moscow's room to maneuver for sustaining its war machine is shrinking at a pace that was not visible even eighteen months ago.

Professor Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute, formulated the diagnosis with surgical precision: "The buffers are exhausted." This sentence summarizes four years of Russian economic policy — spending the reserves accumulated during the oil boom years to absorb the shock of sanctions and finance the war. Those reserves are now nearly empty. What comes next is direct exposure to the costs of a war that the Russian economy can no longer easily afford.

The Russian sovereign wealth fund — from 6.5% to 1.8% of GDP

The melting away of Russia's financial cushion

The Russian National Wealth Fund (NWF) — the sovereign wealth fund that Putin had built as a financial "cushion" to withstand economic shocks — has fallen from 6.5% of GDP at the start of the large-scale war in 2022 to just 1.8% of GDP in the first quarter of 2026. This 72% reduction in four years is the most concrete measure of the financial hemorrhage the war is inflicting on the Russian economy. This fund was the principal difference between the "financial fortress" that Moscow presented to the world and the reality of a country spending well beyond its current revenues.

The current composition of the fund makes the picture even darker. A significant portion of the remaining liquid assets is invested in ruble-denominated instruments whose real value is erratic, or in illiquid assets that cannot be quickly mobilized in a genuine emergency. The facade of the "financial fortress" is held up through accounting window-dressing that serious economists know how to decipher but that Kremlin propaganda carefully conceals from a Russian population denied access to independent data.

What the disappearance of the sovereign wealth fund means for the war

The disappearance of the sovereign wealth fund as a financial buffer has direct implications for Russia's capacity to finance the war. Without these reserves, the Russian government must finance its military expenditures — which now represent more than a third of the total federal budget — either through domestic debt, through money-printing, or through a radical tax increase. Each of these options carries significant economic and political costs.

Russia's domestic debt has exploded since 2022, with interest rates on government bonds reaching levels that make debt servicing increasingly onerous. The Central Bank of Russia has maintained high benchmark rates to contain inflation — but those same high rates increase the state's financing costs. This is the classic spiral of inflationary military spending that all war economies have experienced historically, and which invariably ends by constraining either military policy or economic stability.

Oil and gas revenues — a 45% collapse in the first quarter of 2026

The anatomy of an energy collapse

Revenues from oil and gas fell 45% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, according to the Kiel Institute report. This collapse results from several converging factors: the progressive implementation of the G7 and EU oil price cap on Russian crude at $60 per barrel, reduced Chinese demand amid a Beijing economic slowdown, tightened secondary sanctions on tankers of Russia's "phantom fleet," and the decline in global oil prices partly linked to the USA-Iran agreement that brought Iranian oil back onto the market.

These 45% are not an abstract figure. Oil and gas revenues historically represented between 40 and 50% of Russian federal budget revenues. A 45% drop in this principal financing source creates a budgetary hole of an amplitude that cannot be easily filled by marginal adjustments. To finance the war at the same level as before, Moscow must find substitutes for these revenues — and all available substitutes are either more costly or more politically risky.

The "phantom fleet" under increasing pressure

Russia's "phantom fleet" — the hundreds of uninsured tankers flying flags of convenience that carry Russian oil to Asian markets in circumvention of sanctions — was Moscow's main response to the Western oil embargo. It worked better than initially expected, allowing Russia to maintain a substantial portion of its oil exports. But pressure on this workaround mechanism is multiplying.

The United States and the EU have intensified secondary sanctions on entities facilitating phantom fleet transactions — alternative insurance companies, intermediary banks, transshipment ports. Turkey, long tolerant of Russian transhipments in its waters, is facing growing pressure to tighten its controls. India and China, the main buyers of phantom fleet oil, are demanding increasing discounts to compensate for additional risks — discounts that proportionately reduce the revenues Moscow derives from its sales.

The budget deficit — the annual target exceeded in the first quarter

A budget spiral out of control

The Russian federal budget deficit for the entire year 2026 had been set at a level the government presented as manageable within its framework of "disciplined war economy." This level was exceeded in the first quarter alone — within the first three months of the year. The pace of the overrun suggests that the actual deficit for 2026 will be several times higher than official projections — unless there are drastic spending cuts or an improbable surge in revenues.

Spending cuts are politically delicate in a war economy. Reducing military spending would be an admission of weakness that Putin cannot afford. Reducing social spending risks triggering domestic instability that security services could contain but that represents an additional risk to manage. Reducing infrastructure and public investment spending means mortgaging the future productive capacity of the Russian economy to finance the present war — a calculation that increases long-term costs.

Pressure on the ruble and inflation

Inflation in Russia remains elevated despite the record benchmark interest rates maintained by the Central Bank. War economies are structurally inflationary — productive resources are diverted toward military production, creating shortages in consumer sectors, while high military salaries inject additional purchasing power into an economy whose consumer goods supply is contracting. This inflationary dynamic erodes the purchasing power of Russian households that do not benefit from military bonuses.

The ruble has experienced significant volatility since the start of 2026, reflecting growing uncertainty about Russian public finances. The Central Bank of Russia has tools to intervene on currency markets, but these interventions come at a cost in terms of foreign exchange reserves — which, precisely, are being depleted. Moscow's capacity to defend the ruble is therefore declining, which creates an additional risk of inflationary acceleration if the currency depreciates.

China — 35% of foreign trade and 75% of military components

The structural dependency on Beijing

One of the most important revelations in Kiel Report No. 9 concerns the nature and scale of Russian dependency on China. Beijing now represents 35% of Russia's total foreign trade — a concentration that would have been unthinkable before 2022 and that places Moscow in a position of strategic economic vulnerability vis-à-vis its "no limits partner." But the truly revealing figure is that of critical military components: 75% of these components now come from China or transit through Chinese intermediaries.

This military dependency on Beijing means that any decision by Xi Jinping to reduce or halt these flows would have immediate consequences for Russian military production capacity. Semiconductors, precision electronic components, certain specialized industrial materials — the things Russia can no longer import from the West due to sanctions, it obtains from China. Russia's war machine runs on Chinese diesel.

What dependency on China says about Russian "sovereignty"

Kremlin rhetoric about "strategic sovereignty" and the rejection of Western domination is given an acid perspective by these figures. Russia has replaced a dependency on Western markets and technologies with a dependency on China — and this new dependency is politically more precarious for Moscow, because Beijing has none of the democratic constraints that limit Western decisions. Xi can decide to reduce military flows to Russia overnight, for reasons of his own, without having to consult a parliament or justify his decision to a public opinion.

This asymmetry of power in the Russia-China relationship is a major strategic factor that Western analysts underestimate. Moscow needs Beijing — militarily, economically, diplomatically — far more than Beijing needs Moscow. China can afford to lose the Russian market. Russia cannot afford to lose Chinese support. This asymmetry is the leverage that the West should be using far more aggressively in its diplomacy with Beijing.

Labor shortages — a historic record

The Russian economy without enough workers

Labor shortages in Russia have reached record levels in 2026, according to the Kiel report. This shortage is the direct result of the war: hundreds of thousands of working-age men have been mobilized into the armed forces or have died at the front. Others have fled conscription by leaving the country — estimates of Russian emigration since 2022 range between 500,000 and over one million people, with a disproportionate share of skilled workers in technology, science, and finance.

The paradox of Russia's war economy is that the sectors benefiting from the war — weapons production, military logistics, services to the armed forces — are attracting available workers with high wages, to the detriment of the civilian economy. Sectors like construction, agriculture, personal services, and distribution suffer critical labor shortages. This distortion creates economic inefficiencies that amplify budgetary problems — less civilian production means fewer taxes, less growth, more inflation.

Forced immigration as a partial response

Russia has partly responded to labor shortages through increased reliance on migrant workers from Central Asia — Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. These migrants fill roles in construction, agriculture, and extractive industries that mobile Russians are no longer willing to take. But this reliance on labor immigration has its limits: Central Asian countries face their own demographic pressures, and the conditions imposed on these workers in Russia are often close to forced labor — a reality documented by human rights organizations.

The forced mobilization of prisoners and vulnerable individuals — a practice documented since 2022 and amplified in 2025-2026 — testifies to the desperation of Russian military recruiters in the face of personnel shortages. This recourse to recruits whose military motivation and skills are minimal has negative effects on the operational quality of units, which military analysts at the ISW document in their daily reports on combat actions.

The manufacturing sector and the defense industry — under maximum strain

Weapons production running at full stretch

Russia's war economy has managed to maintain and even increase production of certain types of armaments — artillery, artillery ammunition, kamikaze drones of the Shahed type (manufactured under Iranian license), certain types of missiles. These successes are real and deserve honest acknowledgment — Russia is not a collapsed defense economy. But this production operates under growing constraints that undermine its sustainability.

Russian defense factories often run three, sometimes four shifts per day, seven days a week. This regime of intensive exploitation is unsustainable in the long run for both equipment and workers. Quality problems in high-tempo production runs are documented through analyses of captured armaments on the Ukrainian battlefield. Smuggled electronic components of variable quality replace precision equipment that sanctions prevent from being imported. Russia produces more, but often less well.

Rebuilding stockpiles — hitting the resource wall

The Kiel report notes that Russia continues to draw on Soviet-era stocks to replace its losses in tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy artillery systems. These stockpiles represented a considerable resource at the start of the war — a legacy of the Soviet doctrine of massive stockpiling. But they are not infinite. Analyses from the Oryx Project and other specialized observers have documented the declining quality of deployed equipment, suggesting that Russia is beginning to reach the bottom of its good-quality matériel stockpiles.

Manufacturing new tanks and new heavy artillery systems requires precision industrial equipment and special materials that sanctions make difficult to obtain. Production lines for T-90M tanks and modern systems operate at rates constrained by these supply bottlenecks. The combination of depleting Soviet stockpiles and limited new production creates growing pressure on Russian mechanized combat capabilities.

The Kiel recommendation — the "Ukraine Support Tariff"

A concrete proposal for financing pressure on Moscow

Kiel Report No. 9 goes further than economic diagnosis — it formulates a concrete policy recommendation that Western decision-makers should take seriously: the establishment of a "Ukraine Support Tariff," a levy on Western imports of Russian LNG, Russian chemicals, and Russian fertilizers. The proceeds of this tariff would be directly channeled toward financing support for Ukraine. This approach presents several political and economic advantages.

First, it creates a durable and predictable financing mechanism for support to Ukraine, independent of the annual budgetary vagaries of national parliaments. Second, it makes importers who, through their purchases of Russian energy and products, are indirectly contributing to the financing of Putin's war machine pay part of the cost of supporting Ukraine. Finally, it establishes a price signal that incentivizes diversification of supply sources — thus accelerating the reduction of dependence on Russian energy.

The political obstacles to this proposal

The Ukraine Support Tariff proposal faces several political obstacles. Countries like Hungary or certain EU members still dependent on Russian LNG would oppose it. European chemical and agricultural industries using Russian inputs would resist higher costs. And implementing such a tariff at the EU level requires a unanimity — or at least a qualified majority — that is hard to achieve on questions that directly touch national economic interests.

But political difficulty does not diminish the economic relevance of the proposal. The Kiel Institute developed it precisely because it addresses a real problem: how to durably finance support for Ukraine in a context of national budget fatigue. Other mechanisms — levies on financial transactions, contributions from companies that benefited from Russian sanctions through market relocations — could complement the approach. The essential thing is to move from the model of ad hoc, crisis-driven financing to an institutionalized and sustainable one.

The impact of the USA-Iran deal — an exogenous factor accelerating the crisis

How Iranian normalization weighs on Russian finances

An important exogenous factor in the collapse of Russian oil revenues is the partial resumption of Iranian oil exports following the USA-Iran agreement of June 2026. The return of Iranian oil to the market — even partially, even with conditions — has contributed to downward pressure on global crude prices. For Russia, every dollar less per barrel represents hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues per year. The USA-Iran deal was primarily an American foreign policy decision — but it had an indirect economic sanctions effect on Russia that Washington did not fail to note.

This link between Iranian diplomacy and Russian finances illustrates an important dynamic: Russia's war economy is affected by political decisions that do not target it directly. The world oil price, the energy policies of consuming countries, trade agreements between third-party states — all these factors have effects on Russian revenues that Moscow cannot control and to which it is increasingly exposed now that its financial buffers are exhausted.

The systemic vulnerability of a rentier economy under pressure

Russia remains fundamentally a rentier economy — its prosperity and its capacity for public spending are structurally dependent on revenues derived from natural resources, primarily hydrocarbons. This economic structure is well-suited to periods of high prices and accessible markets. It is deeply vulnerable to price shocks and market restrictions. The combination of sanctions on Western markets, price pressure via Iranian and Saudi production, and G7 price caps creates a multidimensional shock against which the Russian rentier economy has no structural response available in the short term.

Developing a diversified industrial economy less dependent on hydrocarbons is a project of decades, not years. Russia is trying to develop its import substitution industries, but in a context of technology sanctions and brain drain, these efforts are producing results far below stated ambitions. Economic diversification is the twenty-first-century project for Russia. The war has made it both harder and, paradoxically, more urgent.

What this means for negotiations — the urgency of the moment

A window of maximum economic pressure

The Kiel Institute's analysis has a direct strategic implication for still-hypothetical discussions about a ceasefire or peace negotiations: the West now finds itself in a window of maximum economic pressure on Russia. The financial buffers are exhausted, oil revenues are collapsing, labor shortages are worsening. This is precisely the moment when maintained or increased pressure can have disproportionate effects — and it is precisely the moment when releasing this pressure would be most costly strategically.

Peace negotiations taking place now, in this context of maximum pressure on Moscow, would give Ukraine the best negotiating leverage it has ever had on the economic front. The Western temptation to negotiate quickly to stop the war before elections, before the next budgetary crisis, before the next wave of fatigue — this temptation risks squandering the only window in which decent terms for Ukraine are negotiable. Wasting this window would be a historic strategic blunder.

Ukraine as a strategically profitable investment for the West

The Kiel report also recalls a fundamental economic argument often forgotten in debates about the "cost" of supporting Ukraine: this support is among the best geopolitical investments the West has made in decades, in terms of cost-to-effect ratio. Financing support for Ukraine represents a fraction of what it would cost NATO to respond to Russian aggression against a member state — with all that implies in terms of direct military engagement and nuclear escalation risk.

Every billion spent to support Ukraine now reduces the probability of far greater expenditures tomorrow. This blunt utilitarian calculation is not the only reason to support Ukraine — there are moral and principled reasons that are even more important. But in the budget circles where decisions are made on a cost-benefit basis, this argument deserves to be made forcefully.

Superficial resilience versus deep fractures — separating reality from narrative

What Russian economic propaganda conceals

Russian economic propaganda insists on "resilience" indicators — the officially low unemployment rate, consumption maintained in major cities, the apparent stability of the banking system, official GDP growth. These indicators are not all fabricated — some reflect partial realities. But they mask the deep fractures identified by the Kiel Institute: the structural deficit, the depletion of reserves, uncontained inflation, sectoral shortages.

Manipulation of national statistics is an old practice in the Russian context. Opaque methodological revisions to GDP calculations, definitions of unemployment that exclude discouraged inactive workers, inflation figures that under-weight the products most affected by import shortages — all of this creates a gap between official statistics and the economic reality experienced by Russian households. The Kiel Institute works with cross-referenced data, alternative sources, and independent methodologies that allow it to see beyond the official narrative.

The signals markets send regardless

Even in an economy as controlled as Russia's, markets emit signals that propaganda cannot entirely neutralize. Real interest rates on Russian government bonds, credit spreads on Russian debt in markets that still have access, insurance premiums on Russian assets in third-party markets — all these indicators reflect declining market confidence in the trajectory of Russian public finances.

Capital flight from Russia continued in 2025-2026 at rates testifying to the persistent distrust of economic actors capable of moving their assets out of the country. Russian oligarchs and businesspeople who have the means continue to geographically diversify their assets — a form of no-confidence vote in the national economic trajectory that often says more about real prospects than any official indicator.

Recommendations for the West — what the Kiel report prescribes

Maintain and intensify economic pressure

Kiel Report No. 9 explicitly recommends maintaining and intensifying economic pressure on Russia — by reinforcing enforcement of oil price caps, more aggressively targeting phantom fleet entities, and broadening secondary sanctions to cover intermediaries that allow Moscow to circumvent existing restrictions. This recommendation is not provocative — it is based on an economic analysis showing that current pressure has real and growing effects.

The timing is particularly important according to the Kiel Institute: with buffers exhausted, additional marginal pressure can have disproportionate effects. This is the logic of the "decisive moment" in an economic war of attrition — when reserves are depleted, each additional blow does more damage. Easing pressure now, for reasons of diplomatic fatigue or short-term negotiating opportunism, would be like stopping an antibiotic course before completing the cycle: the patient will relapse and resistance will increase.

Increase support for Ukraine to capitalize on Russian weakness

Simultaneously, the report recommends increasing support for Ukraine to capitalize on Russia's growing economic weakness. The argument is of cold logic: if Russia's war economy is hitting its limits, Russian military and logistical production capabilities will come under increasing pressure in the months ahead. Increasing military and economic support for Ukraine now means maximizing the advantage of this window of relative Russian weakness.

The Kiel Institute has also, in previous reports, documented that the countries that have most increased their support for Ukraine have secured the best economic conditions in terms of access to future Ukrainian markets and positioning in reconstruction contracts. Support for Ukraine is therefore also a long-term investment in bilateral economic relations — an argument that should be more central in national budget discussions.

The risks of rapid collapse — scenarios and implications

Scenario 1: internal economic collapse

The Kiel Institute identifies risk scenarios for Russia that deserve to be taken seriously. An accelerated internal economic collapse — triggered by a convergence of negative factors: a further drop in oil prices, an inability to finance the budget deficit, an uncontrollable inflationary spiral — could create domestic political instability that even Putin's security apparatus would struggle to manage. This is not the most likely scenario, but its probability has risen significantly since 2022.

A Russian economic collapse would pose major humanitarian and security challenges for Europe — potentially millions of Russian refugees, risks to nuclear infrastructure, uncertainty over command and control of armed forces. These risks are not arguments for supporting Putin — they are arguments for seriously planning contingencies for a Russian economic and political transition, something the West is not doing enough of yet.

Scenario 2: adaptation and deepening dependency on China

The most probable scenario according to the Kiel Institute is that of a Russia that adapts by deepening its dependency on China. Beijing increases its economic and military flows to Moscow to keep its "no limits partner" in fighting shape — not out of altruism, but because a Russia under maximum pressure is a Russia that needs China more than ever, and this dependency serves Xi's strategic interests. In this scenario, the war in Ukraine is artificially prolonged, sustained by Chinese support for the Russian economy.

This scenario — an economically weakened Russia militarily maintained by China — is the principal reason why the West's policy toward Beijing on the Ukrainian question is at least as important as its direct policy toward Moscow. Aggressive secondary sanctions on Chinese entities supplying military components to Russia are the most direct tool to counter this scenario — but they imply accepting significant short-term deterioration in EU-China and USA-China relations.

What the history of war economies teaches — and Ukraine

Historical precedents of economic collapse under the pressure of war

The history of modern wars offers several instructive precedents of war economies that reached their limits and paid the consequences. Imperial Germany in 1918, the Ottoman Empire at the same moment, Imperial Japan in 1944-1945 — all saw their war capacity erode not because of a single military defeat, but because of cumulative economic exhaustion. Initial economic resilience allowed the conflict to be prolonged. Its exhaustion precipitated the end.

The comparison is not perfect — the historical, technological, and geopolitical contexts are radically different. But the basic mechanism — a war economy reaching its physical and financial limits after exhausting its buffers — is universal. What the Kiel Institute documents for Russia in 2026 structurally resembles the trajectories that economic historians have documented for other war economies in the exhaustion phase.

Ukrainian resistance as an economic lever

Ukrainian military resistance is not only a question of courage and equipment — it is a direct economic factor in the exhaustion of Russia's war economy. Every day of Ukrainian resistance forces Russia to spend resources — ammunition, fuel, equipment maintenance, high military wages, replacing losses — at a rate that no Russian original war plan foresaw. Ukrainian resistance is the principal reason why Russia's war economy reached its limits in 2026 rather than in 2024.

Supporting Ukraine is therefore, in pure economic logic, also supporting the pressure that exhausts Russia's war economy. Western expenditures supporting Ukraine "purchase" a resistance that directly produces the attrition documented by the Kiel Institute. It is an investment whose return is measurable — in the figures of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, in the oil revenues collapsing, in the deficits exceeding their targets. The economics of this war are on Ukraine's side.

Conclusion: The endgame is in sight — if the West does not blink

The moment to maintain pressure — not ease it

Kiel Report No. 9 of June 2026 is a rigorous economic analysis arriving at a clear strategic conclusion: Russia's war economy has reached its limits, the buffers are exhausted, and current pressure is producing increasingly significant effects. This diagnosis must guide Western policy in the critical months ahead. Maintaining economic pressure on Russia's war economy — through sanctions, through oil price caps, through secondary sanctions against intermediaries — is the most effective strategy available in the short term.

Simultaneously, increasing support for Ukraine — militarily, economically, humanitarianly — to capitalize on the window of Russian weakness is the most urgent strategic decision to be made. Discussions about reducing support for Ukraine, about rapid negotiations for reasons of political fatigue, about territorial compromises as shortcuts to peace — all these temptations must be weighed against the economic picture the Kiel Institute paints. The endgame is in sight. But only if the West does not blink.

Ukraine as a test of Western credibility

Beyond the ongoing war, Ukraine is a fundamental test of the credibility and consistency of the West. Promises have been made. Commitments have been undertaken. Lives have been staked on the faith of those commitments. Flinching now, when economic data shows that the strategy is working and that maximum pressure has been reached, would be not only a strategic error — it would be a betrayal. And betrayals, in geopolitics, have consequences that stretch across generations.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Sources and limits

This investigation draws primarily on the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Report No. 9 (June 2026): "Endgame — Russia's War Economy Hits Its Limits," along with secondary data from the World Bank, the IMF, and the Oryx Project for equipment losses. The projections and scenarios presented are analytical interpretations of the Kiel report, not certain forecasts. I do not have access to classified intelligence data on Russia's war economy — my analysis is based on open sources.

The historical comparisons (Germany 1918, Japan 1945) are analytical analogies, not deterministic predictions. Economic trajectories can be altered by unpredictable factors — notably a substantial increase in Chinese support for Russia, or an energy price drop that would benefit Moscow. These risks are identified in the Kiel report itself.

Stated biases

I support maximum support for Ukraine and consider economic sanctions against Russia to be morally justified and strategically necessary. I am critical of discourse about the "ineffectiveness" of sanctions which, in my view, has often served to justify reduced support. The Kiel Institute's data reinforces this position, but I acknowledge that economics is complex and that serious economists hold different views on sanction effectiveness. These disagreements deserve to be followed.

Sources

Primary sources

Kiel Institute for the World Economy — Endgame: Russia's War Economy Hits Its Limits, Report No. 9 — June 2026

Central Bank of Russia — official data on reserves and benchmark rates — 2026

IMF — World Economic Outlook — April 2026

Secondary sources

Kyiv Independent — Kiel Institute confirms limits of Russia's war economy — June 2026

Foreign Policy — Russia's war economy under pressure — Kiel 2026 analysis — June 2026

Oryx Project — Tracking Russian military equipment losses in Ukraine — 2022–2026

Euromaidan Press — "Endgame": the Kiel Institute sounds the alarm on the Russian economy — June 2026