The International Monetary Fund offered Vladimir Putin some refreshing economic news. The Russian president will now have to present the case to his government, which, however, does not share the IMF’s optimism.

The international organization recently estimated that Russia will avoid recession in 2023 and grow at a rate of 0.3% after contracting 2.2% in 2022.

This is tantamount to quasi-stagnation, but still seems like a very positive development. On the face of it, the Fund’s latest forecast offers hope for an economy hit by the invasion of Ukraine and related sanctions.

And while the global economic outlook doesn’t look as bleak as it did a few months ago, the upward revision in Russia’s case is significant.

In October, the IMF predicted that the country’s GDP would shrink by 2.3% this year. The IMF, of course, did not go into details of its optimistic forecasts for Russia.

Russian economists polled this month by the country’s central bank still expect GDP to fall by 1.5 percent this year.

And the economy ministry still expects production to fall by 0.8 percent, according to Russian independent publication The Bell.

Of course, the key to the IMF’s optimism may be its assumptions about oil prices and the impact of recent bans and price restrictions from the European Union and the G7 of the largest industrialized countries. According to the Fund, these measures will not have a “significant” impact on Russian oil exports.

This is the subject of fierce debate among economists as oil prices remain below the ceiling set by the G7.

Much will depend on the dynamics of oil prices this year. Its and natural gas exports accounted for about 15% of Russia’s GDP in 2021, with related taxes covering more than 40% of the state budget.

Russian Urals oil is trading at about $56 per barrel. The fall in the price of benchmark Brent crude is now 33% compared to 7% before the war.

This is a sign that the sanctions have had some impact and also casts doubt on the optimism of the IMF.

In October, the Central Bank of Russia predicted that the domestic economy would shrink by 1.5-4% this year.

The price of Russian oil was assumed to be $70 per barrel, the same figure the government used to plan its budget.

Four months later, the outlook for the global economy has improved and Russia could be more resilient than expected. However, only a serious rally in oil prices, which is unlikely in the context of “weak growth” in the global economy, can justify looking at the Russian economy through the prism of optimism.