All Russian economic figures are unreliable intelligence operations — sanctions expert

Andrii Klymenko, sanctions and security expert, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the internet portal Blackseanews.net, expressed this opinion on Espreso TV.

"I have been dealing with Russia-related topics in one way or another for many, many years. Unlike many people in our country—experts, scholars, politicians—and especially in European countries, not to mention the U.S. The U.S. doesn't understand Russia; it is always wrong in assessing processes in Russia and in their forecasts. It's probably some kind of geographical affliction they have. You see, Russia is not a country. Russia is a hub of intelligence services operations. That is, any information that comes from there, any actions that take place there—these are special operations by intelligence services. Why is this so? Because the entire Russian government consists of old Soviet intelligence officers. They cannot think or act differently. When people, especially—because I myself am approaching that age—when people are 70 and over 70, they don't think like modern people; they live by their old stereotypes. Therefore, I don't believe a single figure quoted regarding the assessment of Russia's economic situation. All these figures have one single source—official Russian information. This is information from Rosstat, Rosbank, the Russian Ministry of Finance, and the Russian Ministry of Economic Development," he said.

Andrii Klymenko also emphasized that he doesn't believe any figures regarding Russian oil prices.

"I don't believe any figure about the price of Russian oil, about those huge discounts, because they have one source. This source is currently broadcast by many international agencies that cite informed sources. There is one single source—this is the company Argus, supposedly British, which for many, many years has been the authorized company of Russia's Ministry of Economic Development and Ministry of Finance to format information about prices in the oil market. I don't believe this company is objective. Therefore, we only believe our own figures. Our figures, what we see, concerns the maritime export of Russian oil, which is the main—predominantly the main, much the main, however you want to say it—source of foreign currency revenue for the Russian budget: the export of Russian crude oil in 2025 was increasing. In January 2025, that is a year ago, it was 21.5 million tons per month, then in February it was 19 million tons per month, but by December 2025 it was 23.5 million. So the trend is increasing. They are doing everything possible to increase the volume of maritime export of Russian oil. And this trend has so far not been reduced either by Trump's famous sanctions or, even less so, by the famous sanctions of the EU, Britain, Canada, Australia, and other countries against Russian tankers. And this is the perpetual motion machine of war. Either we stop it, or we don't," he noted.