According to Russian media reports, on September 15 local time, Russian President Vladimir Putin held an important economic meeting in the Kremlin to discuss the budget plan and economic development goals for the next three years.

But according to the video footage, the meeting scene atmosphere is tense, facing Putin without expression three rounds of questions, people are down and dare not respond.

This scene not only makes people pay attention to the current situation of the Russian economy, but also makes the outside world full of doubts about its future development.

At the beginning of the meeting, Putin recalled the results of last year¡¯s economic conference and reminded officials that there was a consensus on both preventing excessive warming and avoiding disruption of monetary policy.

However, this year¡¯s economic performance was much lower than expected.

Putin bluntly said that according to data from the Ministry of Economic Development, Russia's GDP growth rate in the first seven months of this year was only 1.1%, and the year-on-year GDP growth in July was only 0.4%.

He then asked three questions in a row: ¡°Is this what we want, have we achieved our goals, or need to take other steps and boost growth?¡±

It is worth noting that the reasons behind the slowdown in Russia's economic growth are complicated.

Russia¡¯s economic growth in 2023 and 2024 exceeded 4 percent, mainly due to the stimulus of defense orders brought by the war in Ukraine.

However, this "overheating" phenomenon is difficult to sustain. In 2025, Russia's economic growth rate will drop significantly, and even shrink quarter-on-quarter.

The Russian government may lower its forecast for year-round economic growth for the second time, before the figure had dropped from the initial 2.5 percent to 1.5 percent, and may fall again to 1.2 percent.

In addition, the domestic inflation issue in Russia is also a major problem.

Due to the economic transformation of the wartime, the high salary of enterprises attracted labor, resulting in an imbalance in supply and demand and rising prices.

In order to curb inflation, the Russian central bank had to maintain high interest rates, but this in turn suppressed people's consumption desire and enterprises' willingness to invest, further exacerbating the problem of insufficient domestic demand.

Meanwhile, the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian war has put Russia on the burden of huge defense spending, and the phenomenon of "canon ringing gold" is prominent.

In addition to Ukraine¡¯s attacks on Russian oil and gas production facilities, international energy prices fell, Western sanctions increased, Russia¡¯s energy export revenue fell sharply, and fiscal pressure stepped up.

In the face of these issues, Putin has set a clear goal: the growth rate of the Russian economy must be above the global average, that is, at more than 3%.

However, this goal clearly contradicts the current economic reality. To achieve this goal, Russia needs to solve the problems of insufficient domestic demand, fiscal pressure and sharp decline in energy revenue in the short term, while promoting long-term structural reforms.

The Putin administration may consider increasing fiscal revenue through tax increases, but in the current economic environment, tax increases may cause dissatisfaction among the Russian people and further affect their social stability.

During Putin's recent visit to China, he reached an agreement with China and Mongolia on promoting the China-Mongolia-Russia natural gas pipeline project. If the project can reach an agreement as soon as possible, Russia may be able to obtain an advance payment through the "take-or-pay" principle to ease financial pressure. However, this project involves complicated details and is difficult to land in the short term.

The Russian economy is facing multiple challenges, such as weakening growth momentum, prominent structural contradictions and continued tightening of the external environment.Putin¡¯s strong dissatisfaction with the slowdown reflects the Kremlin¡¯s deep concern about the current economic situation.

In the context of the unfinished war, unresolved sanctions, and fiscal pressure, whether Russia can find a balance and promote economic development remains a huge question.