Russia's economy is sagging amid falling fuel exports, and the budget deficit is already past its full-year forecast. Ukrainian long-range strikes on oil and gas infrastructure are having a tangible effect, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko says.
The strongest evidence for the slowdown is not Ukrainian. Russia's own government slashed its 2026 GDP growth forecast to 0.4% from 1.3% this month, and the federal deficit is at a record level due to the war.
What did Svyrydenko say?
Citing the Foreign Intelligence Service, Svyrydenko stated that Russia has been forced to reduce the number of active oil wells and that refining fell by at least 10% in the first months of 2026.
Russian oil-product exports dropped 21% year-on-year in April and a further 12% against March, she said. The four-month federal deficit reached $75.4 billion, 50% above the figure Moscow planned for the entire year.
"It is the highest figure for comparable periods since the start of the full-scale invasion," she says.
Ukraine's economy, by her account, is moving in the opposite direction. After a first-quarter decline, GDP grew 0.9% in April, according to Economy Ministry estimates, narrowing the four-month contraction to 0.2%, with growth in domestic trade, mining and processing, defense, energy-recovery production, and food.
The IMF projects 2% Ukrainian growth in 2026 and the World Bank 1.2%, she adds.
What independent data confirms
The slowdown is real, and Russia's own institutions document it. The Economy Ministry cut the 2026 growth forecast to 0.4% from 1.3%, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced on 12 May, after the economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter — its first quarterly decline since early 2023, The Moscow Times reported.
The deficit picture is consistent with Svyrydenko's: by the first quarter, it had already reached roughly $60 billion, exceeding the planned shortfall for all of 2026 and double the level of the same period in 2025, the analyst Ondřej Ditrych noted in a Russia Matters survey.
What framing leaves out
The claim that rising oil prices are not helping Russia is the contested part. The IMF raised its 2026 Russia growth forecast to 1.1%, citing higher commodity prices as one of only four countries it revised upward. In March, the federal budget collected about $9 billion in oil-extraction taxes, twice February's take, on the Iran-war price spike.
Meanwhile, Washington has extended its waiver, letting buyers take Russian oil at sea, keeping that revenue flowing even as Kyiv presses to tighten the squeeze.
