A Russian billionaire is warning that the country could run out of cash as early at 2024 without additional funding.
According to multiple reports, Oleg Deripaska said, "There will be no money next year," while speaking at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum in Siberia Thursday.
"We will need foreign investors," he said.
Saying he's "very worried" that government and business are "constantly being set against each other," the 55-year-old aluminum tycoon also suggested that a resolution in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict would not happen before 2025.
Deripaska is worth approximately $2.9 billion according to Forbes. He was the richest person in Russia and the ninth richest in the world prior to the 2008 financial crisis.
He also cautioned that "state capitalism is not an option."
"Russia should keep developing the market economy," he said. "A foreign investor will look at how a Russian investor makes money, what conditions exist."
Interfax, a non-state run news outlet in Russia, reported that Deripaska is aware of the difficulties of entering new markets controlled by "friendly" nations.
"It is very difficult. Other rules of the game," the oligarch said. "If WTO [World Trade Organization] rules do not apply to Russian entrepreneurs, then we need to switch to bilateral agreements. There will be problems with calculations, the sanctions pressure will be serious."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's former press secretary, Iuliia Mendel, weighed in on Deripaska's comments in a tweet on Thursday.
"What an impudence!" she said. "Billionaire Oleg Deripaska said Russia could find its coffers empty next year & needs investment from 'friendly' countries to break the hold of sanctions on the economy."
Deripaska's outlook seemingly contradicts Russian President Vladimir Putin, who told officials just before Christmas that there were "no limitations" in military spending for the war in Ukraine and that the country is "giving everything that the army asks for," according to Bloomberg.
San Diego State University political science professor Mikhail Alexseev told Newsweek that Deripaska's comments should be considered within a larger context and may not be an expression of opposition to Russia's unprovoked invasion.
"We are in the fog of war," Alexseev said. "Deripaska is a tight Putin crony. Speeches like that could well be part of the Kremlin's multi-prong push to fan wishful thinking in Europe and the U.S., that economic problems could undermine the Kremlin's war effort and therefore Ukraine doesn't need as much military support as it is asking for — or perhaps none at all.
"The economy is starting to feel the strains, but it's a long way away from significantly factoring into the war strategy yet," he added.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.