Swedish military intelligence stated that super profits from oil have failed to revive the Russian economy, which is still in a difficult situation.
Source: Head of the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service, Thomas Nilsson, in a comment to the Financial Times, reports “European Truth.”
Details: According to Nilsson, in order to cover the Russian budget deficit, the Kremlin needs Urals oil prices to remain above $100 per barrel for a year.
He also added that in order to solve Russia’s other economic problems, Urals prices should remain at this level for even longer.
Nilsson noted that Russia will have even greater difficulty financing its own invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year, if the truce between the US and Israel with Iran holds and oil prices stabilise.
“They still have a systemic problem. Producing war materials that are then destroyed on the battlefield is not a sustainable growth model,” he noted.
Nilsson added that Russia’s economic problems have spread to the defence sector itself, which provides much of the country’s economic growth at a time when the civilian sector is struggling.
Moscow is redirecting funding to areas where the nature of warfare is changing, he said, including unmanned systems and long-range weapons. But outside of the drone industry, Russia’s military-industrial complex has been unprofitable, riddled with corruption and embezzlement, and dependent on loans from state banks, Nilsson added.
Sweden has intelligence indicating that Russia is systematically manipulating data to mislead Ukraine’s Western allies into believing that its economy has withstood the strain of huge military spending and Western sanctions, Nilsson said.
Nilsson noted that the real situation is even worse, and that the Russian Central Bank is underestimating inflation, which he believes is approaching the key interest rate level of 15%, rather than the official 5.86%.
At the same time, Swedish intelligence drew attention to some financial indicators that may indicate a future banking crisis in the Russian Federation.
“If you have created a system like Putin, you may not know how bad the economic situation really is. But even with the false information he is getting, he will ultimately not be able to escape all of this,” Nilsson emphasised.
As a reminder, in early February, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service reported that last year, Russia’s military spending could have amounted to half of its state budget and 10% of GDP.
In turn, the Latvian Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution noted that it is recognised within the Russian Federation that sanctions are causing and will continue to cause it enormous damage.
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