In an interview with TASS Director General Andrei Kondrashov, aired on the Rossiya 24 television channel, Sobyanin said such talk was "unnecessary, worthless" and came from people who do not understand the subject.
"If there is no economy of peaceful life, there will be no taxes, no incomes for the population, the political situation will be completely different, and we will not achieve success in the war. And to kill life, to kill the normal economy — that is to kill the whole country," said Sobyanin, who heads the federal list of the United Russia party in the State Duma elections.
The mayor added that the modern war is being fought "on two fronts": direct combat operations and a "healthy, stable economy of the country," without which victory is impossible.
Sobyanin's statement came a day after the State Duma again discussed the need for a mobilization model. First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy Nikolai Arefyev said the economy should have been made mobilization-based "long ago," and Defense Committee member Andrei Kolesnik called for a transition "to a war footing" because of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory.
At the end of July, the Central Bank downgraded its forecast for Russia's GDP growth in 2026 to 0–1%, and economic growth in May, according to the Ministry of Economic Development, slowed to 0.3% year-on-year. Additional pressure comes from the fuel crisis: due to Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries, output of petroleum products fell by 21.8% year-on-year in June, and dozens of regions imposed restrictions on gasoline sales.
According to calculations by Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Russia's war spending in the first quarter of 2026 reached a record 5.9 trillion rubles — almost 30% more than a year earlier.