May 3, 2026

Additional revenues from rising oil prices will not help the Russian budget, Siluanov admitted. They will only cover the level of under-receipts

Russia's budget will receive an additional 200 billion rubles due to rising oil prices resulting from the war in the Middle East, stated Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. "We are waiting for them [additional revenues]. But I want to say right away that the levels of receipts and non-receipts of income over the last two months are the same," the official said. According to him, these indicators will balance each other out. He did not say why the Russian budget did not receive 200 billion rubles in March and April. At the end of April, the Ministry of Finance admitted that an increase in taxes for small businesses had led to a drop in treasury revenues by almost a quarter. This refers to collections under tax regimes affected by the VAT increase to 22% with a simultaneous decrease in the income threshold from which this tax is levied. Oil revenues received by Russia as a result of the war in the Middle East are unlikely to help Vladimir Putin revive the Russian economy, which is on the verge of recession, Bloomberg also wrote. Huge budget expenditures stimulate demand, but not supply - resources are directed to military production, whose products are destroyed on the battlefield. The Ministry of Economic Development previously stated that in the first quarter of 2026, Russian GDP fell by 0.3% compared to the same period last year - this is the first quarterly decline since the beginning of 2023.