Russia may run out of money as soon as next year and will require foreign investment, according to outspoken Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
“There will be no money already next year; we need foreign investors,” he said Thursday at an economic conference in Siberia, according to TASS, Russia’s state-owned news agency.
The billionaire’s remarks, which contrast with President Vladimir Putin’s more upbeat assessment of Russia’s economic fortunes last week, come after he called for an end to Moscow’s war in Ukraine in the early days of the conflict last year.
Putin praised the country’s economy’s resilience in the face of unprecedented Western sanctions imposed in the last year.
Russia’s economic output shrank 2.1% last year, according to a preliminary estimate from the government. The contraction was more limited than many economists initially predicted.
But cracks are starting to show — Russia is cutting oil production this month — and Western sanctions could escalate further. Ultimately, Russia’s economic prospects are contingent on what happens in Ukraine.
Foreign investors, especially from “friendly” countries, also have a big role to play, Deripaska said. Whether they will come depends on whether Russia can create the right conditions and make its markets attractive, he was quoted as saying.
In a bid to starve Russia of funds for its aggression, Western countries have announced more than 11,300 sanctions since the February 2022 invasion, and frozen some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves.
But China has thrown the Kremlin an economic lifeline by buying Russian energy, replacing Western suppliers of machinery and base metals among other products, and providing an alternative to the US dollar.
Still, Moscow has a steep hill to climb to replace revenues lost as a result of sanctions, not least from exports. Data released Friday showed that the European Union’s imports from Russia fell by 51% in value between February and December last year. The bloc was one of the main trading partners for Russia before the invasion of Ukraine, with 38% of Russia’s exports going to the European Union in 2020.
