What Kommersant, RBC, Vedomosti, Interfax and Forbes Russia report — selected and summarized in English every morning, for readers who don't read Russian. Analysis-grade sourcing, no wire rehash. Data context in the Russia Terminal. Regional wires: Central Asia · Caucasus.
The fuel crisis moved from the pump to the forecast: Sber halved its 2026 growth call and raised its inflation path on refined-product shortages, the diesel export ban looks set to run to the end of September, and the Agriculture Ministry weighed scrapping grain export duties as Azov-Black Sea shipping stayed blocked.
Sberbank now expects Russian real GDP to grow 0.6% in 2026, down from the 1.2% it forecast in February, Vasilisa Baranova, executive director of the bank's Centre for Financial Analytics, said at a property conference in Ufa. She cut the 2027 call to 1.4% from 1.5% and raised the year-end inflation forecast to 6.5% from 5.6%, attributing the revision to conditions on the fuel market. Sber also now sees the key rate falling only to 13.5% by year-end rather than 12%, which pushes back the point at which rouble borrowing costs become tolerable for capex-heavy importers and their suppliers.
Source: Kommersant, 25 Aug 2026
The government intends to extend the ban on diesel exports to the end of September, three industry sources told Reuters, and one said an extension to the end of the year is under discussion. The current restriction on producers runs to 1 September; it was first imposed in early July for one month and then rolled forward, while gasoline exports are barred outright until 31 January 2027. The Energy Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. For traders, the practical read is that Russian diesel stays off the seaborne market through the autumn refinery maintenance season, tightening the middle-distillate balance in the Mediterranean and Turkey.
Source: Forbes.ru, 25 Aug 2026
The Agriculture Ministry may impose a moratorium on the floating export duty on wheat, barley and maize before the end of the year, two sources familiar with the grain market told Vedomosti, citing difficulties moving farm output through the Azov-Black Sea ports. Almost 10 billion roubles (about 118 million dollars) is earmarked to subsidise rail transport of agricultural exports. The floating duty dates from 2021 and was designed to keep grain at home when world prices ran high; the constraint now is export capacity rather than scarcity, with navigation on the Azov-Don canal and through the Kerch Strait halted since 10 July and vessels no longer calling at Azov, Rostov-on-Don or Taganrog. Azov ports handle close to 25% of Russian grain exports and more than half of vegetable oil shipments.
Source: Forbes.ru, 25 Aug 2026
Russian retail investors moved 1.1 trillion roubles (about 13 billion dollars) into brokerage accounts in April-June, 19% more than in the first quarter and 90% more year on year, the Bank of Russia reported in its quarterly review of broker indicators. It is the highest figure since records began in 2021, and the central bank attributes the inflow to falling deposit rates. Retail portfolios grew 24% year on year to 13.6 trillion roubles (about 161 billion dollars) and client numbers rose 15% to 5.9 million, excluding accounts under 10,000 roubles. Bonds took 37% of portfolios while the equity share fell to 20%, a record low, even though net share purchases doubled quarter on quarter to 101 billion roubles: households bought the dip, but negative revaluation outweighed them.
Source: Forbes.ru, 25 Aug 2026
Rosimushchestvo, the federal property agency, transferred 307 billion roubles (about 3.6 billion dollars) to the budget from managing state assets in the first half, its head Vadim Yakovenko told Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Property sales alone exceeded 260 billion roubles, 2.2 times the same period of 2025, with a further 70 billion roubles of deals in the pipeline and 331 billion roubles expected from sales over the full year; total receipts including dividends should reach about 600 billion roubles. The scale of the shift is visible against 2025, when privatisation brought in just over 100 billion roubles and dividends more than 500 billion, and it signals that asset disposals, many of them companies nationalised through the courts, are becoming a working line item in deficit financing rather than a rounding error.
Source: Kommersant, 25 Aug 2026