MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev estimated yesterday that the Russian economy shrank by two per cent in the first quarter due to sanctions pressure and low oil prices.

If confirmed, that would be the first quarterly contraction since 2009. Medvedev warned lawmakers the situation could worsen further, in contrast to President Vladimir Putin, who said last week the worst of the economic crisis had passed.

“Negative trends continue this year” following the crisis of the ruble, the national currency, in late 2014, said Medvedev while presenting a government report to parliament.

“Between January and March, GDP contracted about two per cent.”

Last year the Russian ruble collapsed, sending inflation into double digits. Prices of food skyrocketed, exacerbated by Russia’s embargo on food imports from the European Union.

On Friday the state statistics service said that in March foreign trade was down more than 26 per cent, while real wages fell 9.3 per cent and inflation picked up by 16.9 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Russia’s central bank predicted the economy could shrink by as much as 4.0 per cent in 2015 if oil remains around US$50 per barrel.

The crunch has forced the government to dip heavily into its reserves and publicly ponder the sensitive issue of raising the retirement age for the first time since the 1930s.

Analysts with the Higher School of Economics last week said that the shrinking of Russians’ purchasing power will continue for at least a year, accompanied by growing unemployment and bankruptcies and a decline in social welfare from budget cuts to health and education.

25 billion euro loss

Medvedev said that the crisis robbed Russia of billions of euros, but argued that since it was brought on by Western sanctions imposed over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it could not be avoided.

Russia last March annexed Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula after deploying special forces there and overseeing a controversial referendum that supported Moscow.

“Adding on Crimea affected our economy,” Medvedev said. “Experts say that the overall damage to Russia was 25 billion euros, that is 1.5 per cent of the GDP, and in 2015 it could be several times that.”

But the decision to annex Crimea was “the only one possible, and we all… supported it, knowing the possible consequences”, said the prime minister.

He said “in terms of intensity, the latest wave of sanctions could be the strongest” that the West had imposed on Moscow in either the Soviet or post-Soviet period.

“Looking at the situation as a whole, it is stabilising, but we should not have any illusions: these are not just short-term crisis events,” he said.

“If external pressure intensifies and oil prices stay at extremely low levels for a long time, we will be forced to develop in a different economic reality which will fully test all of us.”

“Every country’s history has a moment from which begins a new era,” he said.

“Clearly 2014 became this for modern Russia,” he said, comparing the significance of Crimea to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.

“Unprecedented political and economic pressure is payback for our position,” he said.

“Could our country have avoided this economic scenario? The answer is simple: it could not.”