Russia’s oil and gas revenues fall 45% in first quarter as budget deficit exceeds full-year target
Russia’s oil and gas revenues dropped 45.4 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, the Finance Ministry reported.
The ministry attributed the decline primarily to falling oil prices.
Total budget revenues — oil and gas and non-oil and gas combined — fell 8.2 percent, while spending rose 17 percent.
The overall budget deficit for the first three months of 2026 reached 4.58 trillion rubles, or 1.9 percent of GDP, already surpassing the full-year target of 3.79 trillion rubles, or 1.6 percent of GDP.
The revenue drop came as oil export volumes declined following repeated large-scale Ukrainian drone strikes on major Russian export infrastructure. Independent estimates put up to 40 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity as idled in March; by early April, that figure had fallen to 20 percent.
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