[Update] Ozon and Ingosstrakh to end the seller goods insurance progr…

On 9 October Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with US President Donald Trump, and the Russian presidential press service published Putin's statement on the Kremlin website. The statement says considerable attention was given to the prospects for settling the Ukraine crisis, with the situation around Iran and various aspects of bilateral relations also touched upon. It adds that in discussing the state of world energy, the Russian side confirmed its readiness to supply oil and oil products to the American and world markets, which Putin said would have a positive effect on the entire global economy. The two sides confirmed agreement to continue personal contacts between the presidents and cooperation between the presidential administrations, special services and other agencies. Interfax reports that Putin and Trump have spoken by phone several times this year, the previous call taking place on 8 September.

The Russian government submitted to the State Duma a proposal to raise the maximum age for women serving in the armed forces. Interfax reported the initiative on 9 October at 17:32, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a report on the same subject the same day. The pages reviewed do not state the specific new age limit.

Deputies in the State Duma have proposed requiring deported migrants to pay the cost of their own removal. Gazeta.Ru reported the proposal on 9 October at 20:16. Searches were carried out; no independent corroboration from another whitelisted outlet was obtained.

After the Caspian summit, Vladimir Putin, Ilham Aliyev and Masoud Pezeshkian held a separate meeting in Turkmenistan on 9 October. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said the three discussed formats of cooperation in a wide range of areas, singling out energy and noting that 'many others' were also touched upon. Speaking in Turkmenistan, Pezeshkian also proposed creating a CIS working format that would allow Iranian participation, and called on regional countries to pool efforts in the economy and energy.

The US Treasury added the International Criminal Court to its sanctions list on 9 October. Gazeta.Ru and Interfax both reported the move the same day. Gazeta.Ru also reported that the Netherlands will hold a parliamentary vote on withdrawing from the ICC, and addressed the question of whether the court can continue to function under US sanctions.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry handed a note of protest to Ukraine's charge d'affaires in Belarus in Minsk on 9 October. Both Interfax and Gazeta.Ru reported the move the same day. The pages reviewed do not disclose the specific grounds for the note.

According to Rosstat, consumer prices in Russia rose 0.35% month on month in September 2026, with annual inflation accelerating to 6.35%. Citing the statistics service, Interfax also lists component changes: eggs up 8.6% in September, telecom services up 5.1% year on year, petrol up 0.99%, diesel down 1.9%, alcohol up 0.1%, and red caviar up 5.8% against August.

Russia's Finance Ministry estimated the federal budget deficit for the first nine months of 2026 at 5.186 trillion roubles, or 2.2% of GDP. Interfax cited the ministry's figure on 9 October at 18:46.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told TASS on 9 October that Russia will start lifting diesel export restrictions immediately, ahead of the previously planned dates: it is ready to supply an additional 300,000 tonnes in October, with exports planned to rise to 500,000 tonnes in November and 1 million tonnes in December, and monthly exports potentially reaching 3 million tonnes further out. The additional volumes may go to the United States and other partners. Earlier, OFAC said that at Trump's direction it would issue a temporary general licence allowing all transactions involving the sale of Russian diesel until 7 April 2027.

The Russian government has cut the 2027 quota for temporary residence permits issued to foreigners. Interfax reported the decision on 9 October at 17:05. Searches were carried out; no independent corroboration from another whitelisted outlet was obtained, and the specific quota figure needs verification.

Russia's Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case against two 17-year-old Russian citizens over sim-boxes. Rossiyskaya Gazeta published the report on 9 October; the page carries only the date, with no time. Searches were made; no independent corroboration from another whitelisted outlet was found.

Fares on the Moscow Central Diameters will be indexed from 16 October. Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported this on 9 October, with the page showing only the date; Interfax also reported the same day at 20:36 that fares would be indexed from 16 October. The pages reviewed do not give the new fare levels.

On 9 October drones were destroyed over Tuapse in Krasnodar Krai, and falling debris injured one person, who was taken to hospital and is receiving treatment. REGNUM reported this citing the region's operational headquarters.

Interfax reported on 9 October at 21:36 that drone attacks in Belgorod region killed two people. Searches were carried out; no independent corroboration from another whitelisted outlet was obtained.

Reconnaissance balloons launched from Ukrainian territory were shot down over Yaroslavl region. The regional security ministry's press service said work to destroy such objects continues. At around 15:00 Moscow time, Rosaviatsia imposed restrictions at Yaroslavl (Tunoshna) airport, which temporarily stopped accepting and dispatching aircraft, a measure needed to ensure flight safety.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on 9 October that 15 drones were destroyed on approach to the capital. Kommersant and Interfax both reported the figure the same day.

After drone attacks on Yandex data centres, disruptions hit the company's services on 9 October, including the Alice voice assistant. The company said the same day that it had found ways to fix the situation at the affected data centres; Rossiyskaya Gazeta also reported a glitch in the Yandex Go app. Compared with the 8 October report of the accident and full site shutdown, what is new here is the range of services affected and the company's response.

LUKOIL's board of directors recommended a dividend of 535 roubles per share for the first nine months of 2026. Interfax reported the recommendation on 9 October at 10:47. Searches were carried out; no independent corroboration from another whitelisted outlet was obtained.

The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African lawyer and human rights advocate Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay for her 'efforts to advance peace and international law'. She chaired the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and is currently a judge at the International Court of Justice. Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes said she played a key role in ensuring accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. This year there were 287 nominees for the peace prize, 208 individuals and 79 organisations, with a prize fund of $1.2 million.

Omar Murtazaliev, former head coach of Russia's karate team, died on 9 October at the age of 64. The Russian Karate Federation's press service said he died after a serious and prolonged illness; he was a USSR karate champion. Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a report on the same subject the same day.

Compared with the first payout stage launched on 15 September, what is new here is the termination of the programme itself and the stated reason. Ozon and insurer Ingosstrakh have decided to end the existing goods insurance programme for Ozon sellers: policies remain valid until 23:59 Moscow time on 12 October and are switched off in seller accounts from 13 October. In a joint statement the companies said all obligations under the policies will be fulfilled in full under the insurance terms — part of the payouts has already been transferred and the rest will follow shortly, with inventory checks at logistics centres almost complete; incidents recognised as insured events before 13 October will also be paid. The stated reason is that from 1 October conditions for reinsuring certain risks on the insurance market changed substantially and available reinsurance capacity shrank, affecting the reinsurance cover the programme needed. Ozon said it will keep working on alternative financial protection tools for goods in its warehouses; all other seller support measures remain in place. Kommersant adds that the fashion-category programme with bonus payments launched on 5 October is also being closed, with Ozon making those payments in November; citing IBC Global, the paper puts total lost warehouse area at 235,000 sq m. Applicability to Chinese sellers is unconfirmed — the sources do not say whether the programme covered sellers registered outside Russia.

Yandex’s press service said on 9 October that part of the infrastructure of its data centre in the Kaluga region was damaged by a drone attack, with several modules put fully out of service, so some Yandex services may run intermittently. Emergency services and Yandex specialists are working on site, there were no casualties, and the company is still assessing the full scale of the damage. The data centre sits in the Grabtsevo industrial park; at the construction stage it was reported to host more than 3,800 server racks at 15 kW each, with total design capacity of 63 MW and 130,000 sq m of floor area. Yandex also said the same day that it had agreed with cloud providers Selectel, K2Cloud and VK Cloud on accelerated placement and reservation of customer resources. The piece also notes that the previous day a fire broke out at the company’s data centre in Sasovo, Ryazan region, after a drone attack, and that the company later warned it could not confirm the equipment could be restored. The sources give no direct impact on marketplace operations or on Chinese sellers.

The press service of the federal veterinary and phytosanitary watchdog reported that a 24-tonne shipment of avocado produced in Peru was not cleared into St Petersburg after the multi-feeding humpbacked fly was detected. The fly is a carrier of cholera and causes myiasis in domestic animals and humans, settling in skin wounds, the intestines, lungs, the mucous membrane of the eyes and the urogenital system. The arrival date, importer name and follow-up handling are not given, nor is any effect on other shipments.

The Federal Customs Service press service reported criminal cases for abuse of office and bribery opened against officers of the southern excise customs post of the Central Excise Customs. Numerous instances of abuse of office were documented, along with a bribe of more than 13 million roubles for patronage in the illegal movement of vehicles. The officials involved were remanded in custody, and property of former post officers obtained by criminal means, worth more than 80 million roubles, was turned over to the state. The scheme consisted of helping foreign economic activity participants write off the vehicle recycling fee in violation of the established procedure. Five criminal cases were opened under Article 286 of the Criminal Code and two under Part 6 of Article 290 and Part 5 of Article 291. The number of companies and vehicles involved, and any direct impact on importers, is not given.

The State Duma committee on the financial market backed for first reading bill No. 1205970-8, under which the price of an instalment-service contract in Russia may not exceed 400,000 roubles and settlements may only be made cashlessly. The bill was submitted in April by a group of deputies and senators, one of the authors being committee chairman Anatoly Aksakov. The committee’s opinion says the bill is aimed at protecting consumers of instalment services and at reducing the excessive regulatory burden on operators and on legal entities intending to become operators. Current law sets no cap on the price of an individual instalment contract, only a limit tied to the user’s total debt (a contract is not concluded if its price together with existing debt exceeds 50,000 roubles and the operator does not report to the credit bureau). The bill clarifies that the operator may receive the first payment on any contract, not only the first one, before paying the seller, and that the user’s obligations to the seller are deemed fulfilled once the first payment is made to the operator. Minimum operator capital stays at 5 million roubles but is calculated using the central bank’s methodology for microfinance companies. The document is scheduled for first reading in plenary on 14 October, with amendments for second reading due by 13 November; the government supports the bill subject to a deferred entry into force, and no specific effective date is given.

The head of the consumer protection watchdog, Anna Popova, said at the first international conference “Consumer protection in the digital age” that thanks to business preparing in advance for automatic fines, the number of violations in the sale of marked goods fell threefold from May to September; over the first three weeks of the law’s operation violations fell by more than another 1.5 times. She said the service and other agencies began preparing businesses in advance, with regional offices running explanatory work with entrepreneurs over the summer, so violations had already fallen markedly before the automatic fines took effect. Since 1 September Russia has operated an automatic administrative liability mechanism for violations in the circulation of marked goods: retailers transmit sales data to the Honest Sign system, the system analyses it and, on detecting a violation, generates a draft administrative ruling which the service checks and signs; the document goes to the participant’s personal account on the public services portal and is mirrored in the Honest Sign personal account. Applicability to Chinese sellers operating in Russia is unconfirmed — the source does not distinguish by place of registration, and specific penalties and amounts are not given.

According to Roskachestvo, the share of honey showing signs of falsification on the Russian market fell from 75% in early 2024 to 19% by the first half of 2026; despite the positive trend the problem persists. Roskachestvo head Maxim Protasov said at a Federation Council committee meeting that consolidating the result requires a shift to comprehensive modernisation of standards, the key task being to update the interstate GOST with modern identification methods and hard barriers to hidden falsification. The operator of the Honest Sign marking system explains that honey marking complements the existing VetIS veterinary control system and builds a single digital traceability loop from producer to final buyer; the main risk signal is when more finished honey enters circulation than is confirmed by veterinary documents for raw material. The operator says that in the dairy industry, where marking works together with VetIS, the gap between raw material and finished product data fell from 30% to 0.002% over four years. HSE estimates that across marked goods the share of illegal turnover fell more than threefold over five years, from 24.7% to 7.6%. Specific requirements for Chinese sellers in the honey category and timing are not given.

Compared with the wholesale red fish price increases recorded in the 2 October issue, what is new here is the retail monthly statistical basis and full-year catch data. Rosstat data show salmon caviar prices rose 5.8% in September versus August, the highest growth rate in fish and seafood that month; in August versus July growth was markedly lower at 2.1%. The piece notes that 2026 has seen a poor salmon season, with the catch at about 100,000 tonnes against 335,000 tonnes in 2025 and 235,000 tonnes in 2024; the record catch was in 2018 at 676,000 tonnes. Other fish product prices also rose: salted, marinated and smoked fish +4.5%, frozen dressed fish (other than salmon) +2.3%, frozen undressed +1.8%, chilled and frozen dressed salmon +1.6%, frozen squid +1.2%, salted herring +0.9%, salted and smoked delicacy fish products +0.7%, canned fish +0.6%.

Compared with the 9 October rate group recorded in the previous issue (USD 85.4173, EUR 95.4709, CNY 12.7320), this issue adds the group effective from 10 October: USD 84.9048 roubles (down 51.25 kopecks), EUR 94.9745 roubles (down 49.64 kopecks), CNY 12.6739 roubles (down 5.81 kopecks). The figures are taken directly from the Bank of Russia official rate interface, which labels the rate date as 10 October 2026. At this rate 1 yuan is worth about 12.67 roubles. The interface gives no reason for the rouble move, no real-time exchange quotes, and no end date for this rate group.

Sberbank deputy chairman and CFO Taras Skvortsov told Interfax that marketplace turnover is gradually recovering and the bank sees no need to create additional reserves on their loans, with existing reserves sufficient. He said that after the summer decision the bank took no further action, companies adapted, and turnover is now seen recovering gradually; the number of restructuring requests from marketplace sellers is also falling, having peaked in July–August. Earlier, in early September, he said the bank had created additional reserves in July and August against the debt of one marketplace, specifying that this was Wildberries, which was hit hardest, while no action was taken on Ozon because the impact there was less significant; at the time he said the extra reserves were not “huge” but made up a fairly significant percentage of the debt amount. No direct impact on Chinese sellers is given.

Rosstat data show Russian consumer prices rose 0.35% in September 2026 (after seasonal deflation of 0.08% in August), with January–September growth of 5.04% against 4.29% in the same period of 2025; annual inflation accelerated to 6.35% from 6.33% at end-August. Food prices were flat in September (+5.05% year on year), non-food rose 0.55% (+6.47% y/y) and services 0.58% (+7.97% y/y); fruit and vegetables fell 4.24% overall (potatoes −13.1%, cabbage −12.7%, carrots −12%), chicken eggs rose 8.6%, salmon caviar 5.8%, granulated sugar fell 1.8%; petrol rose 1% (+22.7% since the start of the year) and diesel fell 1.9%. According to Interfax, September’s figure came in above the 0.27% consensus of economists polled, and the annual rate above the expected 6.26%; over the first five days of October, amid utility tariff indexation, prices rose 0.9%, and annual inflation as of 5 October recalculated from weekly dynamics accelerated to 7.13% (central bank methodology) and 7.22% (economic development ministry methodology), both above the upper bound of the central bank’s 6–7% forecast range for 2026; for full-year inflation to fit the forecast, prices would need to rise by less than 0.1% a week on average for the rest of the year. Expert gives an annual figure of 7.1%. The Bank of Russia kept its key rate at 14% on 11 September.

According to the Finance Ministry’s preliminary estimate of federal budget execution for January–September 2026, the deficit was 5.19 trillion roubles, or 2.2% of GDP; Lenta.ru notes the deficit shrank by more than 1 trillion roubles over two months (6.45 trillion in July, 5.8 trillion in August) but remains above the ministry’s full-year forecast of 3.79 trillion. The ministry said the full-year deficit is expected within 3.2% of GDP, with the wider structural deficit this year financed mostly without additional borrowing on the OFZ market. January–September spending was 34.83 trillion roubles (+14.5% year on year) and revenue 29.64 trillion (+10%); non-oil-and-gas revenue rose 18.8% to 24.17 trillion, while oil and gas revenue fell 17.2% to 5.47 trillion. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a State Duma budget and tax committee meeting on 9 October that Russia will move away from dependence on oil and gas revenues but will do so “very carefully”; he said the share of oil and gas revenue in the federal budget is planned at 17% for 2027–2029, against periods in “modern history” when it reached almost 50%.

According to analytical company Espar-Geo, Russia’s out-of-home advertising market totalled 62.1 billion roubles in the first half, up 10.7%. The outdoor advertising segment grew 9% to 51 billion roubles; digital surfaces rose 24.6% to 42.5 billion, classic surfaces fell 33.1% to 8.5 billion, transit advertising rose 20.5% to 8.8 billion, and indoor advertising rose 15% to 2.3 billion. The company attributes the high growth rate mainly to the market leader, Russia’s largest outdoor operator Russ (part of the combined Wildberries & Russ company, RWB), whose billings rose 28.9% in the first half to more than 51.7 billion roubles. The other four top-5 operators together accounted for 6.1 billion roubles, up 14%, while remaining operators declined 2.9%. The total number of standard-format video screens under monthly monitoring (50 largest cities) was 12,600 in June 2026, 31.6% more than a year earlier. The source gives no effect on the cost of in-marketplace advertising for Chinese sellers.