Pollution Reveals What Russian Statistics Obscure: Industrial Decline

Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, questions have multiplied about the reliability of Russia’s economic data. Official Russian government reports have often suggested the economy is surviving Western sanctions better than Western governments had hoped. Yet with Moscow’s penchant for wartime propaganda, to what extent should anyone trust Russia’s economic information? 

So here is a data point that is hard for Russia to fake: pollution emitted by its factories and detectable by satellites in outer space.