The damage inflicted on Russia by sanctions was on full display in April as the economy swung into a contraction, with industrial production dropping and retail sales suffering their worst crash since the coronavirus pandemic. Gross domestic product contracted 3% in April from a year earlier, according to an estimate by the Economy Ministry, after recording growth of 1.3% in March. The Ministry blamed the swing on “the unprecedented sanctions pressure,” which hit transport links and consumer demand. Retail sales fell in April for the first time in a year, sliding an annual 9.7%, according to a separate release from the Federal Statistics Service. That was worse than all but one forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists, whose median estimate was for a 5.8% drop. Panic buying by Russians in the weeks after the invasion of Ukraine three months ago initially obscured the crisis in consumer spending. But […]