Russia must allow the ruble to appreciate this year or face increasing inflation due to record energy revenues, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said late on Wednesday on his web site.

"If we do not strengthen the ruble while these revenues are circulating in the economy, there will be high inflation, which has persisted in recent years," he said.

Russia is expected to receive $400 billion in revenues from oil and gas exports in 2012, up 37 percent on the previous year,

"In 2000 we received $50 billion from oil and gas exports. Three years later (in 2003) we had $100 (billion) incomes and $200 (billion) three years after that (in 2006). This year we will receive a record sum of about $400 (billion)," Kudrin said.

Revenues from oil and gas exports in the first eleven months of 2011 amounted to $291.2 billion, a 34.7 percent increase on the same period in 2010, according to Federal Customs Service data.

Kudrin, who had headed Russia’s Finance Ministry since 2000, was dismissed in September 2011 after a public spat with President Dmitry Medvedev over the key issues of fiscal policy, particularly military spending.

Kudrin warned last October that a mixture of internal political motives and favorable, but volatile oil prices was prompting the Russian government to pursue a risky economic policy.

He said Russia needed to create a new economic model, which would be based not on demand spurred by oil revenues, but on private investment growth, accompanied by low inflation and competitive interest rates.