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Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, two researchers at the Yale School of Management, have been targeted for their views on Russia’s economy since the war in Ukraine began.
Over the last few years, they’ve found themselves on Vladimir Putin’s watch list for stating what they see as a simple truth: the Russian economy is in trouble, and there’s only so much cherry-picking of the data that can obscure that fact.
Moscow has fiercely defended its vision of a prospering economy, but the evidence speaks for itself, Sonnenfeld and Tian say. Soaring prices and ailing consumer sentiment have hit key sectors in Russia’s economy, and Moscow is paying a huge cost to keep its war machine running.
The nation is in such dire straits that citizens could even start turning on Putin later this year, they predicted, assuming the West continues to supply military and financial aid to Ukraine.
“We can list for you what Putin has concealed – suddenly – the past three years. If his economy was performing at the level he claims, he’d provide the data ad not hide those facts,” Sonnenfeld told Business Insider in an interview. “Putin survives only by cannibalizing Russian businesses – throwing the living room furniture into the furnace to keep the fire burning.”
The researchers, who met as a professor-student pair at Yale, have received a lot of criticism for their work on Russia, much of it in the form of hate mail and threatening phone calls.
“I’ve had a lot of threats on the phone, and my home has been vandalized,” Sonnenfeld told BI last summer. “Now we have so many security cameras I can’t even have my shirt tails untucked, let alone walk around in my shorts at home.”
Both are barred from entering Russia and were put on the nation’s sanctioned US citizens list in 2022.
Still, neither of them regrets their work.
“We’re pretty excited about it,” they said of their research. “Any of the threats only motivate us to work down much harder.”
Putin’s top critics
Sonnenfeld, 70, and Tian, 25, didn’t plan on getting their names added to a list of Putin’s critics.
Neither are technically economists, but they began researching Russia’s economy while compiling a list of companies that exited or scaled back their operations in Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
That list went viral online, and was instrumental in getting more than 1,000 companies to scale back their business in the country, the Yale School of Management says on its website.
At that time, Tian and Sonnenfeld began noticing cracks forming in Russia’s economy. Putin has claimed Russia is becoming the new “growth hub” of the world, and the IMF says Russia’s economy is on track to grow over 3% this year, more than any other OECD economy, including the US. But that doesn’t square with data Sonnenfeld and Tian are seeing, with some pockets of the country’s economy in dire shape.
Activity in Russia’s car sector is down around 95%-99%, Sonnenfeld and Tian estimate, and activity in most industries is down at least 60%, they said, despite Putin frequently brushing off the impact of sanctions.
The nation, meanwhile, is still suffering from huge capital losses from when it first invaded Ukraine. Russia lost 1 million citizens, 15% of its millionaires, as well as $19 billion in foreign direct investment in 2022 alone, making its future growth prospects dismal, the researchers say.
Among their biggest predictions is that the situation in Russia is so bad that the country could eventually turn on Putin, with a shift in the domestic temperament coming as soon as the November US presidential election this year.
That’s because if Biden is re-elected, the US will likely continue supplying aid to Ukraine, forcing Russia to continue spending money and lives to keep waging war on Ukraine.
“Putin has no grand strategy other than to hope Trump wins and cuts a favorable deal with Russia,” Tian said. “Russia is in for a world of economic pain for a long time to come.”
Positive forecasts on Russia’s economy are based on a lack of visibility, Sonnenfeld and Tian say.
The pair began working together when Tian was an undergraduate at Yale, chasing Sonnenfeld around lecture halls. Eventually, Sonnenfeld became Tian’s advisor and has mentored Tian for over eight years.
The two researchers are still working on ways to urge the West to tighten and enforce sanctions on Russia. They also continue to update their list of companies that have exited the country in the hope that it will encourage more firms to do the same.
Colleagues describe Sonnenfeld as opinionated but generous and charismatic. Tian, meanwhile, has a near-photographic memory and is a highly analytical thinker, colleagues mentioned.
“Steven does a lot of the analytic heavy lifting, and I do the flamboyant color,” Sonnenfeld said of their work together.
People who have worked with them also say the pair is extremely passionate about their work, and both are often known to answer emails at all hours of the night and early morning.
“We don’t believe in regular sleep patterns,” Sonnenfeld added. “Actually, we know it’s very important, but sometimes when there’s a sense of urgency, we do seriously dive into the crisis du jour. We just don’t like bullies, whether or not it’s Putin or some other bravado.”
