(MOSCOW) – Russia’s federal budget deficit after the first eight months of 2026 is one and a half times larger than the finance ministry’s plan for the entire year, according to the business daily Vedomosti, as the cost of the war and falling energy revenues strain public finances.
The deficit stands at 2.5 percent of GDP against an original full-year plan of 1.6 percent. A market expert told the paper that high energy prices are a positive factor for budget revenue, but their impact may be limited by the unpredictability of how the conflict in the Middle East will develop and by the ongoing discount on Russian oil, which is about $20 a barrel. The paper also reports that the Russian economy is overcooled and faces risks of stagnation.
Separately, Vedomosti reports that federal grocery chains have begun to reduce investment in opening new stores and infrastructure development after several years of growth. Moskovsky Komsomolets notes that vegetable prices have risen sharply over the past year, with the cost of the ingredients for borscht climbing by double digits. Potatoes are up 30 percent, cabbage 38 percent and beetroot 32 percent.
The coverage of drones in the Russian press is also expanding beyond the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). Izvestia reports growing demand in Russia for insurance cover against drone attacks, with insurance companies launching special policies to cover cars for damage sustained during such strikes. Kommersant reports that, because of Ukrainian drone attacks, marketplace sellers have moved the storage of goods to their own warehouses. In two months, the share of sellers shipping goods from their own warehouses almost doubled for Wildberries, to 97.4 percent, and for Ozon, from 63.3 percent to 73.1 percent.
Previously, sellers stored stock mainly in marketplace warehouses. The shift follows mass drone attacks on the logistics infrastructure of large online retail platforms. The government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta tells readers that an anti-drone system for protecting factories can be rented for 25 million roubles a month, approximately $294,000 or £232,000, designed to protect large enterprises, oil refineries and warehouses from drone strikes.
On the diplomatic front, RBK questions whether a Putin meeting will take place at the Apex summit in China in November. A political commentator described the trilateral format of Russia, the United States and China as an asymmetrical triangle, with relations between Russia and China at their highest level, rivalry continuing between Beijing and Washington, and Russian-American relations in deep crisis.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, told Yedinstvo that Russia can survive only as a great power. “As soon as it starts to wither, it begins to crumble. We saw that with the Soviet Union. That’s why either we’re a great power or nothing,” he said.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets joke section offered its own commentary on the national mood: “Sometimes you sit there and think, ‘Lord, what did I do to deserve all this?’ And then you remember exactly what you did and you think, ‘Well, actually, I got off pretty lightly.'”
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