High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said on Saturday that the EU's sanctions are "producing hard, tangible effects across Russia's economy" and that their effect will intensify over time. He said that the outlook for Russia's growth for 2023 "remains bleak," with the country's GDP on track to shrink by up to 2.5%.
Borrell pointed out that Russia was running an "important budgetary surplus" for the first half of 2022 due to high oil and gas prices but that the federal budget ended in a deficit that year, while in 2023, Russia’s oil and gas federal budget revenues fell by 52%. However, he said Moscow has turned to other markets to circumvent EU sanctions, with its imports from China growing by 27%.