Russia's Putin scolds top officials for economic contraction

 Russian President Vladimir Putin scolded his top officials on Wednesday after the economy contracted by 1.8% in the first two months of the year, and asked them to come up with new measures to boost economic growth.

Russian growth slowed to about 1% in 2025, down from 4.9% in 2024, due to the central bank's tight monetary policy and Western sanctions targeting the country's revenues from oil sales.

After oil prices spiked in March because of the Middle East crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its forecast for Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2026 to 1.1%, up from 0.8% previously.

The government forecasts growth of 1.3% this year but warned that it may revise this figure down later this month due to lacklustre economic performance at the start of the year.

Putin told his key economic officials, including aide Maxim Oreshkin, central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina, and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, that explaining the contraction by calendar factors alone was not enough.

"I hope to hear detailed reports today on the current state of the economy and why the macroeconomic indicators are still falling short of expectations," Putin said, stressing that they were falling short even of the officials' own forecasts.

Putin told officials he expected proposals for "additional measures aimed at reviving growth," which would promote business initiatives and redirect skilled labour into sectors with higher growth potential.

Putin said the government had also prepared a set of measures to reduce the state budget's dependency on revenues from volatile global commodity markets but gave no details.