The Russian Federation has recognized that it has exhausted the resources of its economy

“We have been growing at a fairly high rate for two years due to the fact that free resources have been utilized,” Nabiullina noted.

She said she was referring to labor, production capacity, capital reserves of the banking system, as well as money from the National Welfare Fund (NWF), with the help of which the Russian government used to patch “holes” in the budget and pay for trillion-dollar megaprojects, The Moscow Times reported.

“We need to realize that many of these resources are really exhausted,” she added.

Unemployment has fallen to a historic low of 2.3 percent, according to Rosstat, while mass emigration and the recruitment of men for war have created a shortage of personnel that the Russian government estimates at 2 million.

Capacity utilization at enterprises, according to Rosstat, exceeded 80%, which was a record in the modern history of the Russian Federation.

The liquid assets of the National Wealth Fund have tripled to 2.8 trillion rubles since the beginning of the full-scale war against Ukraine unleashed by Russia.

The Fund's foreign currency reserves have fallen to 153.7 billion yuan, the lowest since its creation in 2008, and the gold reserve of the National Welfare Fund has decreased to 139.5 tons, although before the start of the big war it exceeded 400 tons.

Russian business profits collapsed by a third in March, and by half in the key oil and gas sector. Industry was on the verge of stagnation (1.2% growth in January-April), and civilian industries began to shrink.

Photo: Khvilya.