Russia on verge of economic crisis – Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine gives forecast

The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine predicts that the russian federation is on the verge of an economic crisis.

The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has reported this on its Telegram channel.

The Intelligence Service noted that next week the State Duma of the russian federation will consider a government bill on revising the federal budget indicators. The main reason for such urgent actions is the imbalance of the revenue and expenditure parts of the budget.

In particular, the strengthening of negative trends in the russian economy is a consequence of a significant excess of the level of expenses over income. First of all, due to the need to finance the war against Ukraine.

"Due to the imbalance, the Russian government is forced to revise the federal budget for 2025 in the direction of increasing its deficit by 250% (from USD 12 billion to USD 42 billion). At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Finance declares the unchanged forecast GDP growth rate - at 2.5%, explaining its logic by the expected "increase in non-oil and gas revenues"", the report says.

As the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine explained, in fact, this means an unprecedented increase in tax pressure on business in the history of modern russia. Thus, in order to normalize the situation in the economy, the russian government has planned to increase revenues from personal income tax by 180%, corporate profit tax by 110%, and value added tax by 17%. And this despite the fact that up to 30% of small and medium-sized businesses in russia are already on the verge of bankruptcy. By the end of 2025, this figure is projected to increase by 50%.

"According to the statement of the Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Anton Siluanov, "the priorities of the Russian budget remain unchanged... all national development goals will be achieved regardless of external conditions and factors..." However, the Minister of Finance is silent about the fact that the revenue part of the Russian budget depends on the export of Russian oil by more than 30%. In the first quarter of 2025, Urals oil significantly lost value," the Intelligence Service writes.

In particular, as of today, purchases of russian oil in the ports of Primorsk and Novorossiysk fluctuate at the level of USD 47-49 per barrel, while the budget was set at a cost of USD 69.7 per barrel. Thus, the fall in russia's oil and gas revenues in annual terms could be up to 30%, or USD 30-40 billion, which is actually equal to the russian budget deficit for this year.

"In the context of manipulating official statistics, the situation is similar with the inflation rate. The Russian government sets the indicator at 7.6%, while according to our estimates, real inflation in Russia already exceeds 20% today," Ukrainian intelligence summarized.

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