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.
Household deposits shrank at more than half of Russia's banks in July, Alrosa swung to its first interim loss in over a decade, and the government moved to clear regulatory ground for data centre construction.
At least 152 of Russia's 301 licensed banks recorded outflows from household term deposits in July, RBC reported after reviewing the turnover sheets banks file with the Central Bank. Retail deposits across the sample fell 0.1%, or 42.8 billion rubles (about $500 million), to 45.11 trillion rubles, while current account balances rose 1.1%, or 337.7 billion rubles, to 32.33 trillion. Five of the top ten banks lost term deposits, led by Alfa-Bank at 87.6 billion rubles (2.9%) and T-Bank at 40.4 billion (1.4%); the Central Bank's own aggregate shows no flight from the banking system, with total balances up 0.3% on the month. NKR analyst Sofya Ostapenko attributed the shift to lower real returns against inflation and holiday-season spending, and an inFOM survey commissioned by the regulator put the share of Russians naming cash the best form of savings at 37%, the highest since autumn 2022.
Source: Forbes.ru, 27 Aug 2026
Alrosa reported first-half EBITDA of 14.35 billion rubles (about $167 million), down 61% year on year and just below the 14.5 billion consensus. Revenue fell 48% to 90.3 billion rubles (about $1.05 billion), operating cash flow dropped to 1.9 billion rubles from 24.9 billion, and free cash flow turned negative at 16.86 billion rubles. The diamond miner booked a net loss of 9.54 billion rubles against a 40.6 billion profit a year earlier, which had included roughly 30 billion rubles from the sale of its stake in Angola's Catoca; net debt rose 84% to 112 billion rubles and net debt to EBITDA widened to 3.2x from 1.2x. Alrosa last reported an IFRS net loss in 2014.
Source: Interfax, 27 Aug 2026
Russia shipped 800,000 tonnes of fish and seafood to China in January–July, 15% more than a year earlier, with export revenue up 1.5 times to more than $2.6 billion, according to the Russian Fish Union's reading of Chinese customs data. Frozen pollock led the volume gain, up 25% to 432,000 tonnes and 1.7 times higher in value at $760 million, while frozen cod rose 25% to 57,000 tonnes and 1.8 times in value to $453 million on tighter global supply: the joint Russian-Norwegian fisheries commission cut the 2026 Barents Sea cod quota 16% to 347,000 tonnes, of which Russia holds 133,000. Live crab exports rose 15% to 25,000 tonnes and 25% in value to $709 million.
Source: Interfax, 27 Aug 2026
Gazprom Mezhregiongaz St Petersburg accepted payment for delivered natural gas in digital rubles from industrial consumer Obukhovoenergo, the first such settlement within the Gazprom Mezhregiongaz group. Russia begins the first stage of mass digital ruble use on 1 September 2026 under federal law 248-FZ of 23 July 2025, which requires qualifying legal entities to let customers pay for goods and services in the central bank digital currency. All group companies meeting the statutory thresholds will have opened digital ruble accounts before that date, the company said; Gazprom Mezhregiongaz sells gas through 53 regional distributors across most Russian regions.
Source: Interfax, 27 Aug 2026
The government's Analytical Centre has sent a draft data centre roadmap to ministries for interagency approval, Kommersant reported. Drawn up under the "Guillotine 2.0" review of excessive mandatory requirements and based largely on industry proposals, the plan contains more than 20 measures, with a 22-point regulatory section covering a dedicated set of OKVED activity codes for data centre services, the removal of restrictions in the power sector, and steps against the shortage of qualified staff. Construction proposals include defining cases where no building permit is needed for individual data centre structures and creating standard design documentation exempt from repeat state expert review, alongside adding planned and under-construction sites to the official data centre register. The office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, who oversees the regulatory guillotine, said lower barriers should help attract investment into data centre infrastructure.
Source: Kommersant, 28 Aug 2026