A month before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted leading state economists at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, whose task was to show the president the possible catastrophic consequences of Western sanctions in the event of a sharp escalation of the situation in Ukraine. Technocrats, as the Financial Times calls them, led by Sberbank chief German Gref and Bank of Russia chairperson Elvira Nabiullina, tried to tell Putin how hard the blow to the Russian economy would be and tried to dissuade the president from taking risky decisions in this matter. However, they could not say directly about the inadmissibility of an invasion of a neighboring country, and the message they tried to convey was eventually ignored, the British newspaper writes , citing sources.
The presentation of the report was conducted by German Gref, it was on him that the technocrats laid the responsibility for delivering the message. During his speech, Gref warned the president that in the event of a sharp escalation, the Russian economy could be thrown back a decade, Russians could become poorer by 20%, and GDP could collapse by 30% in two years, while the Central Bank would be forced to raise the key rate to a barrage of 35% per annum. . At the same time, the participants in the discussion at that time did not realize that Putin was planning an invasion, the worst thing they thought about was the recognition of the independence of the two Ukrainian regions with their subsequent integration into Russia.
Sources of the publication claim that during the speech, Putin interrupted Gref and asked him what the authorities should do to avoid the worst consequences. However, neither Gref, nor Nabiullina, nor anyone else in Putin's presence could directly say that the escalation is unacceptable and this is the only chance to avoid serious consequences. No one told the president that Russia was in danger of a geopolitical catastrophe.
“They were brave enough to ask the big guy for a meeting. But they couldn't get their message across to him. They were never able to give him a single answer, ”says one of the FT sources.
The publication notes that the participants in the discussion left the meeting, unaware of what Vladimir Putin was up to, but this somewhat changes previous ideas about what was happening in the highest echelons of power on the eve of the invasion. Prior to this, it was believed that only a narrow circle of persons close to the president from among the members of the Security Council knew about the full-scale invasion. Similar discussions could have prompted representatives of the technocrats to think about harsher solutions.
The decision to start a war with Ukraine completely baffled many technocrats within the government, who until the last moment did not believe that an invasion was possible. Most of them were in a state of shock for several weeks. However, according to the FT, the head of Sberbank German Gref suffered the most. Sources close to the top manager say they have never seen him so devastated. According to them, Gref always wanted openness for Russia, he hoped that the transformation of Sberbank from a rotten Soviet bank into a pillar of the Russian IT industry would help convince Vladimir Putin and make him more loyal to the market. However, this failed, and Gref literally in a day saw how everything that he had been building so painstakingly for 15 years was reset to zero.
“I have never seen [Gref] like this. He was completely lost, in a state of complete shock. Everyone thinks this is a disaster, he is more than anyone else, ”says one of the sources.
Until now, Gref cannot fully recover from the shock, but now he is at least trying to restructure the areas of work and wants to challenge Mark Zuckerberg by creating his own metaverse. The publication, however, notes that in the context of severe Western sanctions and bans on the supply of high-tech products to Russia, it is unlikely that it will be possible to achieve serious success in this direction.
“He is a man of the world. He liked to attend forums, conferences and meetings. He was in Silicon Valley all the time. He was friends with Jack Ma. And now he is an outcast, ”says a former head of banking structures.
At the same time, the leaders of technocrats cannot leave the system. In particular, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, insists that it is "their (her and the regulator's employees – The Insider ) debt to citizens who risk losing all their money." The management of the Central Bank justifies itself through the possible appointment of the head of the Bank of Russia, Sergei Glazyev, or a person with similar doubtful views from the point of view of economic theory. Mid-level technocrats now simply fear persecution for "betrayal", as a result of which shock has turned into humility and routine.
