Russia‘s economy is probably not, as Ksenia Yudaeva, Russia‘s representative to the Group of 20 nations told Bloomberg the other day, “already in recession,” but it’s economy is clearly decelerating: growth for 2012 as a whole was 3.4%, but in the 4th quarter of 2012 it was only around 2.1% and provisional estimates of growth in the 1st quarter of 2013 are only around 1.1%. The economic slowdown is so significant that it has already been reflected in the Economy ministry’s 2013 growth forecast, which was recently slashed from 3.6% to 2.4%. Before proceeding further it seems worth noting that the initial forecast of 3.6% wasn’t bizarrely optimistic or unrealistic: the IMF‘s 2013 projection for Russia was actually marginally higher at 3.7%, and other forecasts generally had Russia in the 3.5% range of unspectacular but reasonable growth.