Methodology

The Kremlin knows which data are read by experts in think tanks and foreign governments, and how they are read. The series on which conclusions are built are precisely the ones that get closed, redefined and “clarified”.

It has an interest in concealing the effect of sanctions and the true state of the economy, as part of cognitive warfare, and in order to shape the opinions and the decisions it needs both abroad and inside Russia. In wartime, and especially in a war of attrition, this is one of the main directions in which the Kremlin applies its effort.

Many experts, especially in Western countries, find it hard to imagine how far an authoritarian regime will go: how it manipulates data outright, how it resorts to administrative and frequently unofficial measures, and how it covertly draws on the resources of the non-state part of the economy in order to produce statistics that read the way it needs them to. Gross domestic product and officially acknowledged inflation are the glaring examples.

That is why, in the cases where the classical approach would rest on data the Kremlin can manipulate, the panel uses an adjusted method or a synthesis of several.

The notes below set out some of the most important methodological choices and adjustments made while building the panel. Each is tied to a specific widget, states the rule that widget carries, and gives the conditions under which the construction would fail.

Construction notes

• 01 Calibrating a scale on administrative action widget 1.3Why the petrol widget is an ordinal ladder of administrative responses rather than a percentage shortfall, and how to build the same instrument for another shortage.
• 02 Ordering by payer, and the rung nobody announced widget 2.4Why the expenditure ladder is ordered by payer rather than by the size of the saving, and how a rung gets passed without any decision to cut.
• 03 Choosing the direction of a ratio, and who controls the scale widget M.2Why the ratio runs km² per 1,000 losses rather than its inverse, and why the acknowledgement of the measured party is kept out of the zone definition.
• 04 Evidence weighted by regime, and a contaminated denominator widget 1.2Why the weight of a piece of evidence depends on the monetary regime, and why the widget’s own scale is demoted because its denominator flatters the panel’s thesis.
• 05 Scales that read consequence, not volume widgets 2.5 · M.3Why two ladders on unrelated subjects are ordered by what was conceded and by what stopped being protected, rather than by trade volume or by the count of strikes.
• 06 What may enter a financing identity widget 1.1Three tests a line must pass before it counts as a source, drawn from why the sovereign fund is not treated as one and why a construction built on the money supply was withdrawn.
• 07 Numbers that must not be added, and numbers that must not travel alone widget M.1Why three cost figures are published side by side and never summed, and which figures are never published without their partner.

The notes apply to panel v1.9, data anchor 21 August 2026. Figures in them are as of that anchor and are not restated when the panel updates.