The head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, stubbornly keeps the rate high. Photo by ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO / POOL / AFP The budget crisis, superimposed on the fuel crisis, the ultimatum of the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin, the fall in oil prices and the deterioration of relations with Trump - all this happened last week and did not pass without a trace.

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Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP For the first time since the war, the Russian economy went into decline: in the first quarter of 2026, GDP decreased by 0.5% - despite the fact that growth was expected to be 1.6%. And this is with oil prices rising in March and sanctions concessions.

Anton Siluanov and Vladimir Putin The State Duma quickly adopted the amendments to the Budget Code introduced by the government in three readings at once. They give the Ministry of Finance the right to increase federal budget expenditures without any approval and to borrow any amounts on the domestic market for this purpose, without regard to the budgeted debt limit.

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Participant in a protest against raising the retirement age (photo from 2018). The poster depicts Vladimir Putin, Anton Siluanov and Dmitry Medvedev (then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation) After the optimistic speech by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov at the St. Petersburg forum, there was a feeling that in May the budget was finally executed with a surplus. However, this is not so: the hole continued to expand, although the process slowed down.