Oil at $100, economy in the red: how strong is Putin really? The Bell Webinar — May 26, 2026

The war in Iran has distracted the West from Ukraine and pushed oil above $100 a barrel — a major boost for the Kremlin. But Russia’s budget windfall is falling short of expectations, the economy has slipped into the red for the first time in three years, Russians are increasingly frustrated with internet restrictions, and elites are uneasy about the growing power of the security services. So how strong is Vladimir Putin’s position really — and should Western intelligence warnings of a looming economic crisis in Russia finally be worth taking seriously? Join the authors of our weekly newsletter, Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, for an hour-long deep dive into what’s really happening in the Russian economy.

During the webinar, we discussed the following topics:

• What has the war in Iran given Russia — and what has it taken away?
• Russia’s economy is back in contraction — but how bad is the situation really?
• How much money does Vladimir Putin still have — and what happens next year?

We discussed these and many other timely questions about the state of the Russian economy with our experts:

Alexander Kolyandr

A financial analyst, a non-resident senior scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a former Vice President of Credit Suisse, and a former reporter at The Wall Street Journal and BBC.

Alexandra Prokopenko

One of Russia’s leading independent economic analysts. Alexandra worked as an advisor at Russia’s Central Bank and Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. Today, Alexandra works as a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Berlin. She holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Manchester.

Peter Mironenko

Co-founder of The Bell. Peter has 20 years' editing experience at Russia's largest business dailies – Kommersant and RBC. In 2017, he founded The Bell together with Elizaveta Osetinskaya and Irina Malkova.

Watch the Q&A session of the webinar below: