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EUROPEAN COUNTRIES EXPEL RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS
act, more than a third of oil and gas revenues will be injected into the budget by the end of 2022. So why have they seen a massive drop only recently? Audit Chamber officials linked it to a slump in export tax revenues for oil, gas, and petroleum products and MET revenues by as much as one third. The latter comes from a decline in oil output in line with what Russia had pledged while signing the OPEC+ cut deal. On the whole, the drop in oil and gas revenues to the federal budget is due to the decline in oil prices around the world, a slump in gas exports, as the result of mild weather and a shortfall in the EU economies, as well as a set of measures to mitigate the coronavirus crisis. Between December 2019 and May 2020, crude oil traded at $43.1 per barrel, compared to $65.2 a year before. Back in May, Alexei Kudrin, the head of the Audit Chamber, warned of a shortfall in the state’s budget as a result of the coronavirus pandemic with far more modest oil and gas revenues. Even before the outbreak of the pandemic, there had developed a noticeable trend toward a reduced role of hydrocarbons in the global economy.
25 August 2020 EUROPEAN COUNTRIES EXPEL RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS
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In just a few days in August, Norway and Slovakia two NATO countries expelled Russian diplomats linked to espionage activities or those who had served as intelligence officers themselves. The latter country asked the Russian diplomatic staff to leave amidst the high-profile murder of a Georgian man of Chechen descent in Berlin back in August 2019.
