Marketplaces lose part of their active audience after attacks on thei…

On 8 October, after an official lunch, Vladimir Putin held a bilateral meeting with Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov. The Kremlin press service said the talks took place in the Awaza national tourism zone on the Caspian coast near the city of Turkmenbashi, and that the two leaders discussed the main issues of Russian-Turkmen relations. During the two-day working visit Putin is also due to attend the CIS Heads of State Council session and the Caspian ecological summit, and to hold a number of bilateral meetings.

On 8 October the Kremlin official channel reported that Vladimir Putin learned from media reports in the morning that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was in Moscow and invited his old friend to his home. According to the statement, Schroeder arrived on business for the Globus company; on 7 October, when the head of state marked his 74th birthday, Gerhard Schroeder was with Vladimir Putin. Photographs of the two shaking hands in front of a stove were also published.

On 8 October Vladimir Putin met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the CIS summit in Turkmenistan and said Russia is ready to help with the Iran settlement. The meeting was reported by Interfax.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on 8 October that Russia and the United States are discussing a number of potential economic cooperation projects that could be mutually beneficial. "Indeed, a whole range of potential projects is under discussion," he said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meeting Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan on 8 October, thanked the Russian leader for Moscow's position on the Middle East and at the UN. "Thanks to your help they failed to impose a unilateral approach on us. For this we are always grateful to you, for your position, for the position of your country," he said. He added that despite US strikes during the negotiating process Tehran did not abandon dialogue and the sides exchanged initiatives; Iran wants to end the conflict as soon as possible, but this requires that its rights be respected.

Russia's permanent representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Vladimir Tarabrin, told the 113th session of the OPCW Executive Council in The Hague on 8 October that several people in the UK and Canada died after being poisoned by a chemical shipped from Ukraine and sold as a food preservative. He said Western leaders paid no attention to these deaths, and that relatives of the victims plead for justice but no one cares about the deaths of ordinary citizens.

Oil prices rose sharply on the evening of 8 October on concerns over possible fuel supply disruptions from the Middle East and output cuts in the Gulf of Mexico as Hurricane Isaias approached. As of 18:14 Moscow time, December Brent futures on ICE Futures gained $5.38 (5.37%) to $105.58 a barrel, while November WTI futures on NYMEX rose $4.7 (5.32%) to $92.98. Interfax cites analysts saying the rising frequency of attacks on vessels supports prices.

Boris Blokhin, senior managing director for sales and business development at Moscow Exchange, told journalists at the SberInvestments forum on 8 October that the exchange plans to enable crypto transactions from 1 December and is now testing operations with professional participants, a process that began a week earlier. He said the exchange will use a partner settlement digital depository where market participants open accounts, and that no additional permits or licences are required to launch trading. He noted that under the digital currency law in force since 1 September, non-qualified investors may buy only Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether USDT within a limit of 300,000 roubles a year through a single intermediary, while qualified investors face no limit.

Kommersant reported on 8 October that Russian Urals and ESPO crude grades rose in price by almost a third in September. The paper links the move to the effect of the war factor on oil prices.

Rospotrebnadzor said on 8 October that there is no threat to public health in the Irkutsk region and that reports of a second case are fake. (Earlier, on 7 October, the agency denied rumours that an enhanced anti-epidemic regime had been introduced in the region.) It also said it had sent the WHO full information on the situation in the region.

At the Digital Solutions forum on 8 October, Russian mobile operators said that from 15 October they will cut off the numbering databases of banks that have not signed call-labelling contracts with them, and such banks' calls will not reach users. MTS CEO Inessa Galaktionova said 95% of banks have signed labelling contracts, while the remaining 5% are the largest lenders generating 80% of the entire banking market's revenue; she added that anti-fraud measures have cut phone spam by 30%. Mandatory labelling of calls from legal entities and sole traders has been in force in Russia since 1 September 2025.

On 8 October in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, police detained a man who had set up a mining farm in a basement under a shop, RIA Novosti reported.

On 8 October a woman was killed in the town of Grayvoron in the Belgorod region in a Ukrainian drone attack, RIA Novosti reported. Interfax said at 23:29 that one person was killed and three wounded in the region as a result of a drone detonation.

On 8 October the Russian military said 399 Ukrainian drones had been destroyed overnight.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO) said on social platform X on 8 October that a tanker came under shelling 51 nautical miles north of Madinat ash-Shamal, Qatar, and that those on board reported several shell hits and casualties. The centre said it had begun an investigation and gave no further details.

A fire broke out in an apartment block in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsk Krai, on 8 October, killing five people — a woman and her four children. According to the Investigative Committee, the fire started in a fourth-floor flat and the bodies were found inside the building during extinguishing; a criminal case has been opened over causing death by negligence to two or more persons.

On 8 October Yandex reported an incident at its data centre in Sasovo, Ryazan region, which affected part of its infrastructure. The company said the situation at the site is under control, there were no casualties, the data centre has been fully shut down and teams are dealing with the aftermath and restoring affected services; core services are running normally, though some may be unavailable to users. RBC reported that an attack on the Sasovo data centre started a fire, the facility was temporarily suspended, and the company would not confirm whether the equipment can be restored, saying the scale of the damage is still being assessed.

Russian cloud DDoS and cyber-threat protection provider Curator suffered an outage during maintenance work on 8 October, making one network segment temporarily unavailable and affecting some clients, including media and banks, whose sites were inaccessible during the day. The company's press service said the failure was recorded at 15:30 Moscow time and the network was fully restored at 16:10. According to Curator's website, its clients include RIA Novosti, Kommersant, Interfax and VGTRK.

On 8 October Russian Deputy Prime Minister Grigorenko said there are no bans of any kind on the development of artificial intelligence in Russia. RBC reported the statement.

On 8 October the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature was announced, awarded to Anne Carson. Interfax reported the result.

Kommersant reviewed a 'Changing media landscape' presentation by the Rodnaya Rech group built on Mediascope data. In August-September several e-commerce sites lost significant daily reach: Wildberries down 10% year on year, Yandex Market down 8%, while Ozon rose 26%. Time spent fell 28% at Wildberries and rose 10% at Yandex Market and 27% at Ozon. Data Insight partner Fyodor Virin attributes this to attacks that made some goods unavailable in certain regions and sharply lengthened delivery for others, so consumers postponed or cancelled part of their purchases. Drone attacks on marketplace logistics began on 18 July; 15 Wildberries warehouses with about 1.8m sq m were hit, equal to 32% of RWB's total logistics infrastructure, while no damage assessment was given for Ozon. RWB said the methodology is not sufficiently applicable to digital platforms; Yandex Market said it is focused on improving platform economics; Ozon declined to comment.

RBC reports that Yandex Market suspended its referral programme for sellers from 5 October. The full text is behind a paywall; the reasons for the suspension, the resumption date and the treatment of previously accrued referral rewards are not given.

According to recruiting service hh.ru, the median offered monthly pay for courier vacancies in September 2026 rose 38.7% year on year to RUB 190,000, with growth 16.4pp faster than a year earlier. From January to October employers posted more than 219,800 courier vacancies, double the prior year. Avito Rabota development director Roman Gubanov puts third-quarter median courier pay at RUB 134,600 (+31%). SuperJob says median pay for full-time car couriers in Moscow is RUB 150,000 with a maximum of up to RUB 350,000, while foot couriers earn RUB 105,000-200,000. Infoline-Analytics CEO Mikhail Burmistrov attributes the rise to migrant outflows, estimating that more than 150,000 migrants left Russia over the year as the rouble weakened. Kommersant's calculations on Rosstat data put courier services market turnover at RUB 37bn in January-June, with growth slowing to 8.8% from 33.4%. Kuryer Servis Express HR director Tatyana Korneyeva notes pay for drivers, line and warehouse staff rose 16% year on year.

Russian Railways reports that 651,900 loaded and empty containers (TEU) moved across its network in September 2026 across all traffic types, up 7.2% year on year. For January-September the total was 5.911m TEU (+4.9%): domestic 2.214m (+0.1%), import 1.529m (+23.7%), export 1.295m (-2.1%) and transit 872,200 (+1.1%). Loaded containers dispatched over nine months totalled 4.298m TEU (+7.1%), including 1.381m TEU on import traffic (+25.9%). A total of 61.1m tonnes of goods moved in containers (+2%); cars and components (318,100 TEU, up 1.5x), machinery, machine tools and engines (308,100, +27.4%), industrial goods (390,300, +21.3%) and metalware (382,700, +21.6%) led growth, while timber cargoes fell 15% to 379,700 TEU.

Industry and Trade Minister Anton Alikhanov, speaking at the first international conference on consumer rights protection in the digital era, presented preliminary results of a monitoring experiment for producers of goods subject to mandatory labelling. More than 330 organisations flagged as carrying risk factors for the absence of real production were screened at registration, and 270 of them — over 80% — were found to have no production cycle. He said the result shows how important it is to separate genuine producers from companies using that status to legalise grey imports. Since this summer, monitoring has been mandatory for five labelled groups: light industry goods, footwear, perfumes, tyres and dietary supplements; companies claiming Russian producer status must confirm real production. Beyond registration checks, existing producers are regularly reassessed against risk profiles, with 36 producers sent for reassessment in September. The Honest Sign system covers 52 product groups and more than 1m companies on a mandatory or pilot basis. Alikhanov said he hopes the list will keep expanding and the mechanism will extend to all labelled goods.

Head of the consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova said at the same conference that the till-side permissive regime in place since April 2024 — a mandatory automatic check of the labelling code when a product is scanned, blocking the item from the receipt and prohibiting the sale if a violation is found — has blocked almost 4bn units of products. The blocked set includes goods past their expiry date, products showing signs of counterfeiting and other cases covered by the rules. She specified that sales of 103m bottles of mineral water and 5m units of dietary supplements were blocked.

RBC reports that China will tighten car export rules, making imports of Chinese cars into Russia significantly more complicated in 2027. The full text is paywalled; the specific rules, effective dates and the list of brands at risk could not be verified, as the headline does not provide them. The impact on Chinese sellers is unconfirmed — it is unclear whether the new rules cover parallel imports or personal-use imports.

CBR First Deputy Chairman Vladimir Chistyukhin said at the Real Future investment forum that the ability to settle in digital roubles without network access would be a competitive advantage, allowing it to compete even with cash. He cited this summer, when some 200-plus kilometres from Moscow there was neither internet nor mobile coverage, noting that cash still matters greatly; if the digital rouble moves offline as envisaged, that would also be an advantage. He added that it is too early to say digital technology will fully displace traditional formats in the near future. On 23 September CBR Governor Elvira Nabiullina said the regulator plans to test digital rouble payments without internet. The digital rouble was launched at scale on 1 September 2026.

Moscow Exchange senior managing director for sales and business development Boris Blokhin told reporters on the sidelines of the SberInvestments forum that the exchange plans to enable crypto transactions from 1 December and is now testing operations with professional participants, having started a week ago. He said the exchange will use a partner settlement digital depository where market participants open accounts, and that no additional permits or licences are required to launch trading. Russia's law on digital currencies and digital rights took effect on 1 September: non-qualified investors may buy only Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether USDT within an annual limit of RUB 300,000 through a single intermediary, while qualified investors may buy any crypto traded on exchange and OTC markets without a limit.

The Bank of Russia published official rates effective 9 October: USD 85.4173, EUR 95.4709 and CNY 12.7320 roubles. Against the set in force on the coverage day of 8 October (85.4811 / 96.3287 / 12.7516), the dollar fell 6.38 kopecks, the euro 85.78 kopecks and the yuan 1.96 kopecks. The data come from the CBR's official FX rates interface on its website (query for 09/10/2026, rate date returned 09/10/2026). Since 8 June 2026 the euro has been calculated off the ECB rate, as noted in earlier issues.

Head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova said at the first international conference on consumer rights protection in the digital era that internet trade accounts for 21% of total retail sales in Russia, with digital platforms taking almost 70% of all online sales. She said the number of orders placed on platforms exceeded 10bn in 2025. She added that over eight years complaints about distance selling to the service grew almost fivefold, while noting that growth in complaints cannot automatically be read as a proportional rise in violations.

The World Trade Organization raised its 2026 forecast for world merchandise trade growth to 3.9% from the 1.9% expected in March, with growth accelerating to 4.1% in 2027. It says global trade has proved more resilient than expected since the start of the year despite disruptions from the Middle East conflict: supply chains have adapted and large-scale AI investment has given a powerful impulse to goods trade. That resilience was not universal — services trade and some regions proved more exposed — so the services forecast was cut: services trade is now seen growing 3.3% this year (against 4.8% in March) and 6.4% in 2027. World merchandise trade grew 3.5% in the first half of 2026; Middle East oil exports fell almost 24% and LNG 47%; container throughput rose 3.9% in January-July, the latest data available. WTO economists expect world GDP to grow 2.6% in 2026 and 2.9% in 2027, against 2.8% for both periods in March.