According to The Guardian, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska said Russia could run out of money by next year if the country doesn’t get investment from “friendly” countries as Western sanctions put a lot of pressure on it.

Deripaska, the energy and steel magnate who was once Russia’s richest man, told an investment conference in Siberia on Thursday: “There won’t be any money next year. We will need foreign investors.”

Deripaska, who is under UK, US and EU sanctions. about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said funds were running low and “so [η ρωσική κυβέρνηση] it’s already starting to shake us,” Bloomberg said in a report.

He said Russia was under “serious” pressure from Western sanctions and that the country and its businesses should look to other countries with “serious resources” to invest in.

“We thought we were a European country,” said Deripaska, founder of Rusal, the largest aluminum producer outside of China. “Now, over the next 25 years, we will think more about our Asian past.”

The remarks came after the European rating agency Scope warned that Russia’s budget deficit could rise to 3.5% of gross domestic product, compared to the government’s forecast of 2% of GDP. In 2022, the official deficit rose to 2.3%.

Scope said this was due to declining oil and gas export revenues as the West turned its back on Russian energy. “Sanctions and the war are limiting Russia’s fiscal flexibility due to lower energy export revenues, higher war-related spending and a steady decline in GDP,” Reuters said in a statement. “For now, Russia can finance its deficit relatively easily using the sovereign wealth fund, which is expected to rise to just 3.7% of GDP by the end of 2024 from 10.4% of GDP at the end of 2021.”

The rating agency said Russia’s massive military spending will hurt its economy in the long run, as it will come at the expense of investment in infrastructure, digitalization, housing and environmental protection.

Source: Guardian, Bloomberg, Reuters.