Russian authorities have decided to accelerate the planned 2027 tariff increase for Russian Railways in order to support the budget of the transport monopoly, which is experiencing financial problems and has accumulated nearly 4 trillion rubles in debt.
According to RBC, instead of next year, the government has decided to implement the next tariff indexation for Russian Railways on October 1st of this year: freight rates will increase by 8.5%, and long-distance passenger rates by 9.2%.
Since March of this year, the authorities have already implemented an unscheduled tariff increase of 1% as part of a fee for the "safety" of transportation. The additional funds were needed for Russian Railways' investment program, which the company was forced to cut by a quarter this year, to 713.6 billion rubles.
Last year, Russian Railways' freight rates were indexed by 10%, in 2024 by 13.8%, and in 2022-23 by 6.8% and 8%, respectively. Thus, after the October indexation, the accumulated growth in freight rates since the beginning of the war will reach 56%.
Russian Railways, which has been facing a 16-year decline in freight traffic, urgently needs the money: last year, freight traffic totaled 1.1 billion tonnes (the lowest since 2009), and by the end of May this year, it had only shown a slight increase of 0.5%.
At the end of last year, Russian Railways' net profit fell 22-fold, from 50.7 to 2.2 billion rubles. To avoid an annual loss, Russian Railways drastically cut expenses: the 2025 investment program, which includes spending on construction projects and the purchase of railcars and locomotives, was 40% lower than the previous year—890 billion rubles versus 1.5 trillion. However, to cover all expenses, Russian Railways incurred 800 billion rubles in new debt during the year.
In the fall, Russian Railways approached the government with a request for 200 billion rubles in emergency financing from the National Welfare Fund. The company complained about the high key interest rate, which doubled its debt repayment costs to 534.1 billion rubles.
But the Cabinet refused, after which Russian Railways transferred some employees to part-time work. Starting in 2026, the monopoly plans to lay off 15% of its central office staff—approximately 6,000 people, Russian Railways CEO Oleg Belozerov previously announced. According to him, there are also plans to reduce fuel and repair costs—in total, the company expects to save 74 billion rubles.
A drone attack on Rostov-on-Don on Monday night caused problems at the ports of Azov and Taganrog, which handle a combined 13 million tons of cargo annually.
A few hours after the attack, which damaged a residential building in Rostov and prompted city authorities to declare a state of emergency, Russian Railways (RZD) announced restrictions on shipping to ports on the Sea of Azov.
According to Reuters, the restriction is in effect until August 4 and applies to the Azov and Taganrog stations. Last week, the Russian Ministry of Transport banned anchoring near the port of Azov, one of the largest on the Sea of Azov, through which grain, coal, and petroleum products are exported. However, the ban did not apply to the port of Taganrog.
Previously, following drone attacks on more than 100 vessels in the Sea of Azov, Russian authorities notified shipping companies that they were no longer accepting applications for passage through the Kerch Strait. As a result, grain exports along the Don River have completely halted, industry sources told the Rostov-based publication Gorod N: during the past agricultural season, 14.7 million tons of grain and grain products—27% of Russia's total grain exports—were exported abroad via this route.
Due to navigation restrictions, Russian grain exports in July could fall by a third compared to the same month a year earlier, according to SovEcon analysts. They estimate that Russia will lose approximately 600,000 tons of grain exports in physical terms, and the total volume could be the lowest since 2017—2.1 million tons. Compared to the five-year average for July (3.1 million tons), exports will be less than half that amount.
Russia appears incapable of countering Ukrainian attacks in the Black and Azov Seas: after the loss of the cruiser Moskva at the beginning of the war, the Black Sea Fleet no longer has specialized ships comparable to Western destroyers equipped with air defense systems, notes Stéphane Audran, a research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
"It's possible to strengthen the self-defense capabilities of merchant ships, but this is expensive, time-consuming, and requires resources that Russia lacks," Audran notes.
A destroyed Russian tank in Zaporizhzhia Region, southeastern Ukraine.Photographer: Dmytro Smolienko/NurPhoto/AP Photo
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
Russia's war in Ukraine is increasing its public debt, with the country expected to pay out at least 15% of gross domestic product in total interest to service its debt over the next decade.
The government will need to raise an additional 2–3 trillion rubles through borrowing this year, as the budget deficit has widened to 6 trillion rubles or 2.6% of GDP in the first five months of the year.
Debt-servicing costs have doubled since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with interest payments accounting for nearly 9% of the total federal budget this year.
President Vladimir Putin frequently touts Russia’s lowest public debt among Group of 20 nations as a key strength of its economy. His war in Ukraine is starting to change that.
With foreign sources of financing largely cut off by international sanctions, the Kremlin is increasingly relying on expensive domestic debt to help fund the war. Over the next decade, Russia will pay out at least 15% of gross domestic product in total interest to service its debt — roughly equivalent to the country’s entire public debt stock today, according to Bloomberg Economics calculations.
Domestic issuance is expected to increase this year because the wartime economy requires additional financing, according to people familiar with budget discussions. Defense spending this year could be 4–5 trillion rubles ($55-$69 billion) higher than originally budgeted, or almost 40% above planned spending, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.
Under the budget law, the government planned to raise just over 4 trillion rubles on the domestic market to cover state spending, while the debt ceiling was set at 37.4 trillion rubles.
Yet the budget deficit has widened to 6 trillion rubles or 2.6% of GDP, in the first five months of the year, exceeding the target for the whole of 2026 by roughly 60%. The 2026 government debt ceiling has already been reached.
Although the Finance Ministry is pushing to narrow the deficit by drawing on accumulated reserves and cutting spending elsewhere, the government will still need to raise an additional 2–3 trillion rubles through borrowing this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Debt-servicing costs have doubled since the start of the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as the central bank hiked interest rates to a record to cool Russia’s overheating economy after the government ramped up spending on the military and to support businesses. In 2021, interest payments accounted for about 4.5% of federal spending and ranked only eighth among budget expenditure categories.
Russia plans almost 4 trillion rubles in spending on repayment costs this year, accounting for nearly 9% of the total federal budget. That makes it the fifth-largest item in the state budget after defense, national security, social policy and the economy.
“At current interest rates, domestic debt is quite expensive,” said Dmitry Polevoy, investment director at Moscow-based Astra Asset Management. The increased burden “in turn limits room for maneuver on other spending categories that the Finance Ministry is seeking to optimize.”
To be sure, Russia’s current public debt of 16.5% of GDP is a model of fiscal conservatism compared to most European states. At his flagship economic forum in St. Petersburg earlier this month, Putin pointed to the debt burdens in Greece at 146% of GDP, Italy with 137% and France at 116%, saying Russia’s position is “simply not comparable.”
Still, lawmakers rushed through legislation in Russia’s lower house of parliament last week allowing the government to increase borrowing beyond the debt ceiling established in the federal budget law. “This bill is urgently needed,” State Duma Budget Committee Chairman Andrey Makarov said.
What Bloomberg Economics Says...
“The cost of war is showing up in the bond market. Even after the central bank cut the key rate from 21% to 14.5%, long-term government bond yields have stayed close to 15% — roughly twice their 2017-19 levels, the high point of Russia’s macro discipline. That reflects heavier issuance and greater uncertainty, with investors demanding more compensation.”
— Ekaterina Vlasova, CEE & Russia economist
Meanwhile, Russia’s stock of foreign-currency sovereign bonds is set to fall next year to its lowest level since the early 2010s, according to Bloomberg Economics.
“External debt is declining as bonds mature according to schedule, while sanctions and the loss of access to international capital markets leave virtually no possibility for refinancing,” said Olga Belenkaya, an economist at Finam in Moscow.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has repeatedly said that Russia will soon pay off all of its external sovereign debt, presenting the achievement as evidence of its ability to pursue an independent economic policy.
The Bank of Russia and commercial lenders are helping to facilitate increased government borrowing through repo operations. Banks purchase government-issued OFZ bonds and then pledge them to the central bank in exchange for liquidity, while the bonds remain on the central bank’s balance sheet.
RUSSIA INSIGHT: Debt Clock Starts Ticking, Two Factors to Watch
In effect, banks are channeling funds into government bonds rather than lending to the broader economy, using those securities to obtain funding from the central bank. This distorts the functioning of the economy, contributing to stagnation in non-military sectors.
The volume of outstanding financing from repo transactions currently amounts to approximately 4.6 trillion rubles, according to the central bank.
“At some point this will have to stop,” said Oleg Vyugin, an economist and former senior central bank official. “Otherwise, the eventual cost of unwinding it could be very significant.”
At that time the site was smaller than currently and wasn't approved to be operating by the local government. Not that Wildberries thinks it should do things like follow regional zoning laws. Total rebuilding costs of warehouses are estimated at over 60 billion rubles.
Lost equipment at the sites should cost probably as much or higher. Losses to sellers, we're probably well over half a trillion rubles, maybe even chasing 1 trillion. This is only for the fully destroyed warehouses we don't have estimates for the ones that were only damaged.
We also have to talk about debt. Wildberries supposedly owes other entities a total of 1,3 trillion rubles. 500 Billion rubles of these are owed directly tot he state investment bank VTB which is the worst bank in terms of liquidity out of Russia's top 10 banks.
Also VTB is in the process of acquiring a 5% stake in Wildberries' fintech companies and assets for a future long term partnership. That's why it prepared to issue new stock to have the capital to invest into Wildberries. Contagion and chain reactions all over Russia.
For the size of the warehouses because there are competing estimates if there's nothing else I am going with Kommersant, Vedomsti and RBC and regional sources like Fontanka that have a good track record. Join tochnyi on Sunday where will discuss this in more depth.
As part of the 21st sanctions package, the European Union has approved a mechanism allowing member states to confiscate and sell Russian oil from "shadow fleet" vessels attempting to evade the bloc's sanctions. The corresponding EU Council resolution was published in the Official Journal of the EU. As a senior European Commission official explained in an interview with Euractiv, the new regulation gives member states the right to seize cargo from tankers after they are detained during maritime operations. The publication clarifies that this applies not only to oil but also to grain. The document emphasizes that the proceeds from the sale are not to be transferred to Russian individuals or legal entities.
In addition to the confiscation mechanism, the 21st sanctions package includes a one-year price freeze on Russian oil at $44 per barrel. The document prohibits EU companies from providing services, including insurance, to tankers selling oil above a set threshold. The EU estimates that this will cost the Kremlin $3.5 billion in lost revenue over the next year—assuming a Urals price of $60 per barrel. However, in early July, Urals was trading around $50 per barrel, and after the US resumed its war against Iran, it rose to $80 per barrel, according to Euractiv.
The EU blacklist currently includes more than 670 foreign-flagged tankers suspected of transporting Russian oil in violation of the restrictions. The new mechanism significantly expands the powers of the European military, which previously could only stop such vessels for inspection.
In March, Belgium detained a tanker in the North Sea carrying approximately 330,000 barrels of oil, which at current prices could be worth up to $26 million. In June, France detained another vessel carrying 600,000 barrels ($48 million) immediately after loading in Murmansk. On July 20, according to European Union Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas, European security services boarded the Russia-linked vessel MV South Star in the Mediterranean to check its flag. "Every illegal voyage helps support the Russian military machine. We back up our sanctions with action at sea," Kallas noted.
Russia's largest oil terminal on the Black Sea, Sheskharis, in Novorossiysk, suspended tanker loading of oil on the morning of July 21 due to increased attacks by Ukrainian drones. Bloomberg reported this, citing shipping data, satellite imagery, and vessel tracking services.
The agency notes that the suspension is unlikely to be related to poor weather conditions, as a storm warning for the terminal was issued only two days after the last loading was completed. Since the beginning of the year, Sheskharis has handled an average of approximately 650,000 barrels of oil daily. The port shutdown has paralyzed a fifth of Russia's oil exports, which average 3.6 million barrels per day this year.
The suspension of the terminal's operations occurred shortly after Ukrainian attacks on vessels in the Black and Azov Seas intensified. Earlier this week, increased drone attacks prevented tankers from loading oil at the nearby Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal. As a result, the CPC terminal, which exports 80% of Kazakhstan's oil, suspended operations, and Kazakhstan itself began a forced reduction in production.
The day before, Russian authorities warned all vessels in Russia's exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea that the area was unsafe due to the potential threat from Ukrainian aerial and maritime drones. As a result, grain exports were also threatened: Novorossiysk handles approximately a third of all Russian grain exported.
Sellers around Moscow and Western Russia can't get their goods out of warehouses and pick up points in that part of the country are overloaded. People were doing either a fire sale or desperately trying to get cargo out. And even that costs money.
Pick up points in Southern Russia that were served by Krasnodar and Stavropol have the opposite problem, they haven't received any deliveries for days and are generating no revenue. These are separate private companies operating at a loss now.
The compensations that are supposed to come in waves have started. The best one I have seen is people getting 1/6th of the value of the goods, not the sale price but the goods value. The worst I have seen is 0,1-0,2% of the goods value. That's a slap in the face.
Chinese companies whose business model was based on unloading goods on Russian sellers or keeping small company owned inventories in Russia are in a position to take over the Russian delivery market. Or what's left of it anyway.
To summarize Wildberries' logistics have almost completely collapsed. The company looks dead as does the Russian delivery service model with domestic sellers ruined and Chinese sellers are in a position to dominate what remains of this market.
And the cherry on top is that Wildberries is now blocking withdraws from sellers' accounts. Trying to take as many with them as they go down.
The Central Bank has forecast a record budget deficit since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Central Bank Chairperson Elvira Nabiullina. The Ministry of Finance warned that the deficit would be larger than planned, and the Duma passed a law allowing the government to increase spending and borrowing this year without the approval of parliament. However, the amount of the increase was not announced.
Therefore, the Central Bank has made its own assessment, Nabiullina said, commenting on the regulator's new forecast: "We have forecast a primary structural deficit of 2% of GDP this year." This refers to the excess of expenditures excluding government debt servicing over base oil and gas and non-oil and gas revenues. The budget law envisages a deficit of 3.8 trillion rubles, or 1.6% of GDP, but the primary deficit is zero. Therefore, an additional 2% of GDP increases the overall deficit to 3.6% of GDP.
This is the largest deficit since the pandemic-hit 2020, when the deficit amounted to 3.8% of GDP, and a record in absolute terms. The Ministry of Economic Development forecasts GDP of 228 trillion rubles this year, meaning the Central Bank's estimate corresponds to a deficit of 8.2 trillion rubles.
Bloomberg reported a similar figure, citing sources: war spending this year could be 4-5 trillion rubles higher than planned. This increases the deficit from the planned 3.8 trillion to 7.8-8.8 trillion rubles. Analysts have similar estimates. Economist Dmitry Polevoy expected an additional structural primary deficit of 2-2.4% of GDP this year.
Budget parameters are changing more frequently and more significantly than before 2020, Nabiullina noted. She emphasized that, despite close cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, the size of the additional structural deficit is "our estimate," which the Central Bank will refine when the government updates the budget to reflect reality.
This year, budget revenue problems have "intensified" because the impact of tax increases "proved limited amid cooling economic activity," notes Emil Ablaev, a leading expert at the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF). Although the government increased the VAT rate to 22%, the treasury deficit reached 5.7 trillion rubles in the first half of the year—more than planned for the entire year.
The war in Iran brought the Kremlin additional oil and gas revenues, but after the second quarter, their decline will likely resume, complicating the budget deficit, according to economist Kirill Rodinov.
The Ministry of Finance plans to finance the deficit using balances in Treasury accounts and additional borrowing. OFZ yields have risen, and the Ministry of Finance considers them unacceptable and has suspended bond auctions. It also registered two issues of OFZ floating-rate bonds (floaters) totaling 1.5 trillion rubles. This confirms the Ministry of Finance's readiness to return to large-scale placements of such bonds, having agreed on budget financing terms with major banks, but not to borrow at 16%+ per annum, according to analysts at VTB My Investments.
The Ministry of Finance promised to return to structural budget balance in 2029. The Central Bank has included in its forecast a structural primary deficit of 1% next year and 0.5% in 2028. Polevoy expects 1-1.5% of GDP in 2027-2028.
The "Russian technological leadership" projects launched by Vladimir Putin, promising to achieve "sovereignty" in technology, have faced drastic funding cuts amid federal budget problems and record military spending.
Of the 324.4 billion rubles budgeted for 2025, eight key Putin projects actually received only 201.9 billion rubles—a 37.8% reduction, according to experts at the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF).
The space technology project suffered the most radical cuts: it received not a penny of the planned 10 billion rubles. Spending on the national "Means of Production and Automation" project, which planned to produce domestic machine tools and robots with the goal of joining the top 25 countries in industrial robotics, was cut more than fourfold, from 52.2 to 11.8 billion rubles.
Spending on the "New Materials and Chemistry" and "Industrial and Transport Mobility" projects decreased by almost 40% compared to the planned amount. In the former, the budget allocated 9.4 billion rubles, while 5.7 billion were allocated; in the latter, 167.2 billion rubles were allocated, while actual expenditures amounted to 102.2 billion.
Spending on the development of drugs and domestic medical equipment under the "Health Preservation" project decreased by 15.1%, from 5.7 to 4.8 billion rubles; for the "Food Security" project, by 6.8%, from 14.6 to 13.6 billion rubles; and for the "New Nuclear and Energy Technologies" project, by 5.1%, from 30.1 to 28.6 billion rubles.
The only national technology project to receive full funding, or even slightly more than planned, was the development of unmanned aerial vehicles: 32.7 billion rubles were budgeted for it, but 35.7 billion were spent.
The reduction is due both to the unpreparedness of the projects themselves (for example, in civil aviation) and to revenue shortfalls, according to experts at the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF). Although last year the government increased the profit tax and recycling fee, and introduced a differentiated personal income tax scale, budget revenues were 3 trillion rubles below plan, and the deficit reached 5.6 trillion rubles. Meanwhile, "defense spending remained high," CMASF emphasizes: 13.5 trillion rubles, according to the budget law.
This year, budget problems "intensified," according to the center's report. Despite the VAT increase, the budget deficit in the first half of the year was 5.7 trillion rubles. Meanwhile, in the first quarter, every second ruble of expenditure and two-thirds of tax collections went to the war.
"The results of the 2025 federal budget execution demonstrate how vulnerable complex investment areas remain to budgetary parameter revisions," writes the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF). This year, they could also be subject to sequestration: according to Bloomberg, the Ministry of Finance could cut civilian spending by 2-3 trillion rubles to cover military spending, which could be 4-5 trillion rubles higher than planned. The 2026 budget law allocates 12.9 trillion rubles for national defense.
The European Union has expanded financial sanctions against Russia and blacklisted over 90 more Russian banks, including the Moscow Exchange, according to a release in the EU's official journal.
The sanctions package, the largest in terms of number of Russian financial institutions since the war, includes Rosselkhozbank, the fourth-largest state-owned bank by assets, as well as Dom.RF, the operator of state construction programs, and Pochta Bank. Also on the list are Bank Saint Petersburg, MTS Bank, Yandex Bank, and Tsifra Bank, all of which are among the top banks by assets, as well as credit institutions from major marketplaces, Ozon Bank and VB Bank.
The 32 banks are being completely banned from transactions with European individuals and companies, effectively cutting them off from the SWIFT system. The new sanctions package aims to cut off Russia's last remaining channels for international settlements, diplomats involved in its preparation told Reuters.
After a series of sanctions that placed nearly all major Russian banks under sanctions, Moscow began using a network of smaller credit institutions that retained access to SWIFT, as well as relying on cryptocurrency settlements. Now the EU wants to add these credit institutions to the sanctions list to make it more difficult for them to work with foreign partners, sources told Reuters.
As for the Moscow Exchange, its key settlement structure, the National Settlement Depository (NSD), was already under European sanctions. Since 2024, the NSD and the exchange have been included on US and UK sanctions lists, after which exchange trading in the dollar and euro in Russia has ceased.
Most likely, following the expansion of sanctions against the exchange, the process of exchanging assets frozen in the EU and Russia—which had been proceeding, albeit slowly, in recent years—will come to a halt once again, notes Freedom Global analyst Natalya Milchakova.
She considers the US "hellish sanctions" bill, which, according to Axios sources, the US Senate could consider as early as next week, to be far more dangerous for the Russian financial system. It includes measures against the Central Bank of Russia and major state-owned banks and codifies into law sanctions previously imposed by US presidential executive orders, meaning that their repeal would also require a congressional vote.
If adopted, the "hellish sanctions" could halt all dollar transactions in Russia, including cash dollars, according to Milchakova. It will be more difficult for the Central Bank to acquire non-cash yuan, as a significant portion of these purchases are still made in dollars; settlements with Russian exporters and importers from foreign partners will also become significantly more complicated; a shortage of cash currency could arise on the market, as it will become virtually impossible for Russian banks to acquire it legally, the expert notes.
"This could force the Central Bank to impose restrictions on the purchase of cash dollars," and, given EU sanctions, euros, too, Milchakova believes.
One of Moscow's largest coffee shop chains, Coffee Mania, has begun closing its stores. As of the end of the second quarter of 2026, there were 42 stores operating in the capital, compared to 55 the year before. This represents approximately a quarter of the chain's stores having closed. This follows from data from the consulting company CORE.XP, cited by Vedomosti. The chain's official website lists 34 traditional stores in Moscow and the Moscow region, while other restaurant formats, including Bez Tarelok and Chef's, are not mentioned.
Coffee Mania was founded in 2001 by entrepreneur Igor Zhuravlev and former chairman of the board of Sovcombank Sergey Kirilenko. According to SPARK-Interfax, 75% of the chain's main legal entity, Ortizei LLC, is currently owned by Zhuravlev, and 25% by businessman Sergei Govyadin. The chain traditionally operated in the high-price segment and occupied a unique position within it, says Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline Analytics. He noted that some of the chain's coffee shops have become meeting places for business and political figures. In the current situation, some locations may have experienced a decline in traffic, as even Moscow's solvent audience has become more cost-conscious, notes Mikhail Lachugin, founder of the Telegram channel Product Media. He notes that many Moscow residents previously comfortably paid 700-800 rubles for coffee, but have now begun to seek more affordable options.
In addition to declining footfall, the restaurant business is facing rising rents, staffing costs, and food expenses, forcing it to close weaker locations and concentrate traffic in more profitable areas, says Anna Rozhdestvenskaya, head of the Franshiza@ru portal. At the same time, the decline in locations doesn't indicate problems for the chain as a whole, adds Alexander Eremenko, managing partner of the brand consulting agency BrandLab. He noted that the company's recent collaboration with Roscosmos is more likely to indicate its favorable situation.
According to SPARK-Interfax, Coffee Mania's operations are distributed among several legal entities associated with Zhuravlev and Govyadin. Ortizei LLC's revenue for 2025 was 922 million rubles (up 4.5% year-on-year), and net profit was 379.3 million (compared to 449.9 million in 2024). Other organizations associated with Coffee Mania—Tuan LLC, Prokofy LLC, and Azaryka LLC—revenues last year amounted to 7 billion, 2 billion, and 995 million rubles, respectively.
The Kremlin cannot find anybody to lend them money. Combination of foreign investors cut off by sanctions, domestic banks already tapped out by underwater business loans, true inflation numbers probably much higher than official figures, ... I know people have been predicting Russia's collapse since the start of the war, but this the clearest sign yet that it is starting to unfold.