Peskov objected to Biden that the Russian economy is not only about oil. But the share of oil and gas revenues only temporarily fell due to the pandemic

In fact, oil and gas revenues for many years accounted for slightly less than half of the revenues of the Russian budget, the level of 46% was last fixed in 2018. In 2020, due to the pandemic in the world, the demand for energy resources fell sharply, which led to a drop in oil and gas revenues – from 7,924.3 billion rubles in the previous year to 5,127 billion rubles (according to the estimate contained in the Main Directions of the Budget, Tax and Customs Tariff Policy for 2021 and for the Planning Period of 2022 and 2023, approved by the Ministry of Finance) … This actually accounted for 28.7% of budget revenues.

Thus, non-oil and gas budget revenues in 2020 were at a record level of 71.2%. But by no means all of them are associated with Russian domestic production; a significant part of budget revenues is VAT and excise taxes on imported goods, as well as import customs duties. According to the “Main directions of budgetary, tax and customs-tariff policy for 2019 and for the planning period of 2020 and 2021”, which, of course, did not provide for the force majeure factor of the pandemic, oil and gas revenues consistently exceed non-oil and gas related to domestic production, that is, all other industries taken together contribute less to the state budget than hydrocarbon energy.

The pandemic somewhat changed this ratio, revenues from non-oil and gas domestic production in 2020 exceeded oil and gas (33.1% versus 28.7%), but, according to the Ministry of Finance forecasts, in 2023 they will be practically are equalized… So Peskov is wrong to accuse the experts of the Biden administration of unprofessionalism.

However, Biden generally spoke not only and not so much about the Russian economy as about the factors of Russian influence in the world. Peskov preferred to remain silent about whether Russia has any other levers besides nuclear and energy.