DiabloWags said:
The price of Ural Crude has been in a nosedive since peaking at $77.50 a barrel in January.
Now at $50.
This really hurts their budget.
Their budget is based on $69 crude oil price.
It is also less than the $60-a-barrel tipping point, above which profits from oil exports are added to Russia's sovereign wealth fund via taxes. Revenues below this cut-off are covered by drawing from the fund, which as of April 1, held 3.27 trillion rubles ($39.8 billion) in liquid assets.
Vlad not happy.
The Russian economy has been diversifying, see my post above, and no longer as dependent on energy exports. Ironically, having that energy export windfall did hinder their economy and domestic industrial base in the past, in that they could import a lot of products and park their money in foreign portfolios abroad, one common aspect of the Dutch Disease.
One other point you are missing is that the Russian budget is of course Ruble-denominated, if oil prices go down, so will the Ruble, so the actual Russian budget will not fluctuate nearly as much as oil prices do.
Also Russia's debt to GDP ratio is below 20%, say what you want about Putin but he cleaned that up, along with other key aspects of the Russian economic base. Russia's debt to GDP ratio was nearly 100% when Putin took over in 2000. btw he has a PhD in economics, and did his thesis on the development of ressource-based economies...
The Russians could easily sustain two more years of Ukraine war. Ukraine's military ressources on the other hand won't last this long, the Russians will be in Odessa, Dnipro, Kharkov and possibly Kiev by then if the war goes on for another two years.
Hence the macabre folly of Zelensky, Starmer and Merz' refusal to enter serious negotiations. Another half a million plus Ukrainian soldiers killed, and the territorial loss of up to half of Ukraine as a result of their stubborness.
