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Claus Hulverscheidt, Berlin
When you look at the bare numbers, critics of the general Vladimir Putin can really become depressed. For four months, the European Union, the United States and their allies have been trying to dry up the Russian president’s oil and gas funding sources with boycotts and embargoes, forcing him to abandon his attack on Ukraine. What is happening, however, is the complete opposite: Because world market prices for oil and gas are rising faster than EU imports from Russia are falling, and because Moscow has also managed to divert exports to Asia, Putin is posting record revenues month after month. By the end of April, he had already collected half of the 9.5 trillion rubles (170 billion euros) estimated in the budget for 2022 from energy exports. Experts predict revenues of up to 300 billion euros for the year as a whole – a third more than in 2021.