Internet trade association asks to extend state support to online sto…

In an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin, Vladimir Putin said claims that Russia poses a military threat to Europe amount to "political schizophrenia," adding that EU citizens themselves do not want to fight Russia. He said Russia is not preparing any war with Europe and that inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia is impossible, and that those who sought it will come to realise that living in friendship with Russia better serves the interests of European peoples.

Vladimir Putin signed a decree appointing Vladivostok mayor Konstantin Shestakov acting governor of Primorye Krai until the elected head of the region takes office; the document was published on the official legal information portal. Earlier, Putin appointed Primorye head Oleg Kozhemyako deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District. Shestakov is a graduate of the "Governors School"; 55 of Russia 89 regional heads are its participants.

Talking to journalist Pavel Zarubin, Vladimir Putin said Russia will in any case solve its tasks and all goals of the special military operation will be achieved. He said that trilateral talks between Moscow, Washington and Kiev will focus on ensuring the security of Russia and Ukraine once peace is reached, and that Moscow is ready to resume contacts toward that goal. He also said it has become obvious to everyone that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield.

Citing Xinhua, at least 16 people were killed and 32 injured, 11 of them in serious condition, in an earthquake in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. The tremors destroyed more than 300 houses. The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre reported a magnitude 7.1 quake on Thursday. Authorities continue to assess damage and respond to the aftermath.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered "no" when journalists asked whether Putin had handed any written proposals of that kind to US President special envoy Steve Witkoff. He said that at the previous day meeting Putin did not hand Witkoff any documents containing Russian proposals on the Ukraine settlement. The Putin-Witkoff meeting took place in St Petersburg the day before.

At a briefing, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not rule out holding early parliamentary elections to adopt a new constitution. He said the draft constitution will be published shortly, discussions will begin and he will try to persuade opposition colleagues; if that fails, other scenarios including snap elections will be used. His Civil Contract party lacks the constitutional majority needed to adopt the new charter and requires support from opposition deputies. He also said that if the Armenian people consider the declared era of peace and the new constitution unfeasible, at some point it may turn out that his political mission is exhausted.

The Arbitration Court of the Moscow District upheld the lower courts rulings to recover 18.2 trillion roubles from Euroclear in favour of the Bank of Russia and dismissed the foreign bank appeal. The Ninth Arbitration Appeal Court had rejected Euroclear appeal on 16 July, while the court of first instance fully granted the central bank claim on 15 May; on 26 May the court granted immediate enforcement. The central bank filed suit on 12 December 2025, linking its claims to the "unlawful actions of Euroclear" and European Commission plans for an indefinite freeze of the regulator assets and their transfer to third parties. As of 1 December 2025 the regulator put losses across all asset classes at 200.1 billion euros, or 18.173 trillion roubles at the official rate that day. Details of the rulings are not published and the case is heard behind closed doors.

Meeting the New People faction in the State Duma, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov agreed that "one has to live more frugally," but added that there is no need to "tighten belts": priorities for spending resources pooled through the budget must be defined more clearly. He said the three-year budget draft is built on these principles. The State Duma will consider the federal budget for 2027 and the 2028-2029 planning period in late October, with a projected deficit of 2% of GDP in each year.

According to Rosstat data reviewed by RBC, the gap between the highest and lowest average monthly accrued wage across Russian regions in July reached 201,000 roubles. The highest average wage was recorded in Chukotka at 243,700 roubles, the lowest in Ingushetia at 42,700 roubles. The average monthly accrued wage of employees is calculated before tax and includes bonuses, and takes into account all staff, including those on very high salaries. In July the national average monthly accrued wage was 109,500 roubles.

Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said at a migration policy commission meeting that the "Amina" app for labour migrants and students from visa-free countries has proved effective after a year in Moscow and the Moscow region, and other regions should adopt the experience. He said the app helped law enforcement prevent crimes and offences more effectively. Migrants in Moscow and the region must install the app and allow processing of personal data including geolocation, with the information going to the Interior Ministry; a person may be removed from migration registration if no location data is transmitted for three days. The experimental procedure runs in the region until 1 September 2029 and covers citizens of visa-free countries (except Belarus) who came to work with or without a patent, and to study.

Russian regions have begun trialling an oral history exam for ninth-graders, which becomes mandatory from 2028 and will be a precondition for admission to the basic state exam. During the trials the education and science supervision service is testing different exam variants and task formats; public and professional discussions will follow and decisions will be taken. The exam materials cover both Russian and world history. Earlier it was reported that in 2027 the number of tasks in the unified state exam will change only in history and advanced mathematics.

The New People faction sent the Transport Ministry a proposal to establish a uniform procedure for refunding air tickets when flights are cancelled. Under the initiative, money must be returned to the passenger within ten days of a single request, and the uniform procedure would apply to all agents. If a flight is cancelled, the passenger receives a notification and chooses another flight or a refund. Another rule is automation: money should go straight back to the card without additional applications. The initiators said the current procedure depends on the airline, dragging the process out for weeks or months and passing the passenger between carrier and agent. One of the authors, State Duma transport committee member Maxim Gulin, said no new infrastructure is needed since carriers already have personal accounts and SMS notifications.

Russian air defence systems shot down 1,226 fixed-wing drones over a day, the Russian Defence Ministry reported. The report does not specify the counting period or the geography of the intercepts.

The regional interior ministry and prosecutors office in Ingushetia reported that on the evening of 22 October, at kilometre 572 of the Kavkaz federal highway near Nazran, a Volkswagen Polo driver struck a woman with a pram carrying a child born in 2025; she was crossing at an unlit, undesignated place. The child was killed and the woman was taken to hospital with injuries. Prosecutors said they will establish all circumstances, causes and contributing conditions and assess compliance with traffic rules and legislation on protecting the life and health of minors.

After the cyclone passed, flooding moved from Yalta to Alupka, part of Greater Yalta, where the Khara-Bair river burst its banks and flooded nearby streets. Compared with the municipal emergency declared in Yalta on 20 October, the centre of the flooding has shifted south. Acting head of the Yalta administration Svetlana Shevchenko said the most difficult situation is now in Alupka, where response forces were sent. Although the rains stopped and Crimea has seen no precipitation for two days, water continues to flow down from the mountains. In Alupka, sandbag dams are being built, some residents have been evacuated to temporary accommodation, bus routes have been changed and an operational headquarters set up; the situation in Yalta has eased.

Sberbank said its supervisory board meeting on 10 November will consider appointing former Deputy Prime Minister and head of the government staff Dmitry Grigorenko as deputy chairman of the bank management board. He will oversee strategically important group projects, including relations with the government and regional authorities (GR), as well as digitalisation and the use of artificial intelligence in the public sector. Sberbank chief German Gref said Grigorenko arrival will strengthen the group and give impetus to a systemic dialogue with the state and regions. According to a source, Grigorenko told his former subordinates that he plans to start at Sberbank in about a month.

Dmitry Klementyev, deputy director of the Industry and Trade Ministry department for the automotive industry and railway engineering, said at a meeting on demand support programmes that by the end of 2026, without the usual effect of subsidised car loans, AvtoVAZ sales and production rates could fall by roughly 20-25%. He said Russia suspended subsidised car loan and leasing programmes in late September because they had reached their planned volume and fulfilled their market support task. Since the start of the year, 178,200 vehicles were sold under the two programmes, with more than 123,000 bought under subsidised car loans.

Novatek chief Leonid Mikhelson told Interfax on the sidelines of the 19th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum that, in cooperation with PetroVietnam, the company plans not only to supply LNG to Vietnam but also to implement receiving infrastructure projects there. "Definitely. It is in our strategy. The regulations are there. The results are there," he said when asked about building LNG receiving terminals. He confirmed that first-stage deliveries of 1 million tonnes per year are under discussion and said the company is close to concluding an agreement with the Vietnamese side.

The actor family told RIA Novosti that Andrei Terentyev, widely known for his role in the film "We Are from the Future," died aged 44; the family named an ulcer as the cause of death. The farewell will take place on 23 October at 10:50 at a funeral hall on Partizanskaya Street 8 in St Petersburg, after which the body will be taken to Kazan for burial. Terentyev was born on 14 July 1982, graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Theatre Arts, worked at the Priyut Komedianta, Osobnyak and Baltiysky Dom theatres and directed stage productions; he made his film debut in 2006.

In the third round of the Europa League league phase, Spanish club Real Sociedad beat Norwegian side Lillestrom 6-0 away. Russian midfielder Arsen Zakharyan came on as a substitute in the 73rd minute and scored in the 80th; the goal was his second for Real Sociedad this season and his first in European competition. The club took its first win of the league phase and has 4 points.

The Association of Internet Trade Companies (AKIT, whose members include Ozon, Wildberries, M.Video and Detsky Mir) has proposed extending state support to companies that suffered losses during drone attacks without losing their own property. According to its letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, this covers organisations that used damaged partner infrastructure: warehouses, data centres, cloud services and communication channels. This includes online stores forced to suspend sales, as well as enterprises located near damaged complexes that lost access to their own facilities or experienced supply disruptions. AKIT proposes a threshold of a loss of at least 5% of the previous year’s revenue or the value of inventory. Specific measures requested include a 12-month deferral of taxes and insurance contributions, suspension of tax debt collection, a moratorium on field tax audits, benefits for restoring damaged infrastructure and exemption from insurance contributions. Under government resolutions of 25 August and 30 September 2026, only owners of infrastructure complexes currently qualify for such support. Vedomosti’s request to the government press service went unanswered.

Oleg Novikov, head of publishing group Eksmo-AST, said at a Vedomosti conference that drone attacks on Wildberries warehouses pushed growth in book sales revenue to zero in Q3 2026, after growth of more than 10% in the first half. He said more than 80% of book products are in an extremely difficult position: books burned in warehouses and the sales channel contracted sharply. He added that high prior-year comparables also played a role: in those years the marketplace invested heavily in promotion and discounts, and sales grew 60% annually from September. He said sales through other channels — above all federal retail chains and Ozon — continue to grow actively, but this does not yet offset losses from the decline on Wildberries. In September Novikov put the company’s losses from attacks on marketplace warehouses at around RUB 400mn. RBC, citing the Russian Book Union and the Association of Book Distributors, reports that as of 21 August more than 13.5mn books were destroyed in attacks on Wildberries warehouses. Wildberries and Ozon logistics centres have been under drone attack since July 2026.

Compared with the 22 October report that the Industry and Trade Ministry planned tariff countermeasures against import price dumping, this is now a decision adopted at Eurasian Economic Union level. The Council of the Eurasian Economic Commission has decided to raise import customs duty rates on goods whose supplies have grown sharply amid a substantial fall in import prices. The Commission’s statement says rates are being raised to World Trade Organization bound levels, affecting in particular light industry products, certain types of electronics and shut-off valves. The measure follows monitoring by a high-level working group headed by EEC Trade Minister Andrey Slepnev. He said the measure is aimed at protecting existing production in EAEU countries, preserving jobs and developing industrial cooperation and import substitution. The decision enters into force 10 calendar days after its official publication and remains in force until the end of September 2027. The statement does not list specific commodity codes, rate values or the publication date.

First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, following a meeting of the subcommission on ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of individual economic sectors, instructed agencies and regions to assess the readiness of the transport sector to prevent disruptions and quickly restore traffic if various threats materialise. The government press service said the meeting was co-chaired by Andrey Nikitin, who recently moved from Minister of Transport to deputy prime minister for transport, with heads of federal and regional authorities taking part. Manturov called for clear allocation of responsibilities between facility owners, carriers and government bodies, and for identifying additional equipment and funding needs for regional and municipal infrastructure. He said the regulatory framework for transport security is generally strong and its provisions must be implemented in full, otherwise the issue of personal liability of officials should be raised. Nikitin said the sector must build a reliable, preventive protection system capable of effectively preventing threats and minimising any risks to the economy. The statement gives no deadline or specific indicators for the assessment.

The Industry and Trade Ministry plans to keep the deferral of utilization fee payments in 2027 for Russian manufacturers of vehicles, trailers and self-propelled machinery that have signed special investment contracts (SPIC), according to a draft government resolution published by the ministry. Pushing payment deadlines to year-end is a measure used in recent years to address working capital shortages in the sector. This year, groups with SPICs may pay the utilization fee for Q4 2025 and Q1–Q3 2026 by mid-December 2026. The ministry’s press service said that with expensive borrowed funding and the need to service loan portfolios, the mechanism traditionally lets enterprises free up working capital for investment programmes, component purchases and timely wage payments, which is necessary for stable assembly line operation and steady deliveries to customers. Draft federal budget materials indicate that utilization fee receipts from imported and locally produced wheeled vehicles will amount to about RUB 1.5 trillion in 2026 and rise to almost RUB 1.8 trillion in 2027, with receipts from local production estimated at around RUB 930bn this year and RUB 1.2 trillion next year. The report concerns Russian companies with SPICs; imported cars and Chinese brands are not mentioned, and applicability to Chinese sellers remains to be confirmed.

EEC Minister for Technical Regulation Alexander Subbotin said at a press conference at the Commission’s press centre on 22 October that the EEC has prepared a package of measures to combat violations in the conformity assessment area. The document has been sent for coordination to the governments of the five EAEU states, and the proposed approaches are to be presented at the December meeting of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council. Subbotin said the package addresses three key problems: ensuring product safety, countering the use of unreliable documents, and stopping violations in the activities of certification bodies and testing laboratories. The measures are operational, systemic and digital, including development of information exchange and the creation of a register of test reports, which should speed up verification of information and response to violations. He said digitalisation, including artificial intelligence tools, should reduce manual operations, speed up information exchange and the handling of requests and claims; implementing these solutions requires technical readiness of the information systems of authorised bodies in all EAEU countries. According to the Commission, the single EAEU register contains information on 2,957 active conformity assessment bodies, including 409 certification bodies, 2,395 testing laboratories and 153 inspection bodies; a single register of issued conformity certificates and registered declarations of conformity also operates. The statement gives no implementation timeline or penalties.

Lenta.ru, citing TASS, reports that Chief Justice of the Russian Supreme Court Igor Krasnov, during a meeting with Chen Wenqing, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, spoke about protecting the rights of Chinese business representatives. The outlet notes that Krasnov’s interlocutor said Chinese investors are ready to invest in the Russian economy but are not always well versed in local law; Krasnov, in turn, said he had put all cases related to Chinese investment under judicial control. The Supreme Court press service readout published the same day quotes Krasnov as saying that citizens and organisations must be confident their rights will receive effective protection regardless of which of the two countries they study, work or do business in; the readout does not contain the wording about putting all Chinese investment cases under control. Whether this gives Chinese businesses practical procedural advantages in Russia is not explained in the source; applicability remains to be confirmed.

Compared with the 16 October report that a weak salmon run pushed up wholesale prices for red fish, this adds official figures for annual catch and caviar output, plus an assessment that prices have stabilised. Ilya Shestakov, head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries, told Interfax on the sidelines of the Verona Eurasian Economic Forum in Istanbul that the price of red caviar, which rose this year because of a weak salmon run, has already stabilised and there will be enough caviar before New Year. He said many companies, including a state-owned one, supply all their caviar to the domestic market; he believes there will be no further price growth, except perhaps a seasonal rise before New Year. He named climate change, specifically significant water warming, as a main reason for the poor run; there are no catch forecasts for 2027 yet, and they will be more definite in spring. He said the 2026 salmon catch fell to almost 100,000 tonnes, against 335,000 tonnes in 2025 and 235,000 tonnes in 2024; the record was 676,000 tonnes in 2018. Red caviar output this year is estimated at 5,200 tonnes, against 12,000 tonnes in 2025. The source does not address the impact on imports of aquatic products from China.

The Bank of Russia has published official exchange rates effective from 23 October 2026: USD 81.1255 roubles, EUR 91.1364 roubles, CNY 12.1460 roubles. Compared with the set in effect on the coverage day (from 22 October: USD 81.9739, EUR 91.9337, CNY 12.2806), the dollar fell by 84.84 kopecks, the euro by 79.73 kopecks and the yuan by 13.46 kopecks. The figures come from the Bank of Russia official rates service for 23.10.2026 — the set published on the coverage day and effective from 23 October. The service returns data only, without commentary.

Compared with the 14 October report on Yandex Pay’s phased restoration of transfers and payments, this adds the specific scope of restored savings, deposits, card issuance and QR payments, plus progress on instalment products. Dmitry Pirogov, head of Yandex’s fintech business, said on the company’s Telegram channel that Yandex Pay has restored core service functionality disrupted by drone attacks on data centres. He said users can again open savings accounts, deposits and funds, transfer money between accounts and to the Pay card and check balances: “All important functions are running stably.” Issuance of the Pay card, ordering and activation of plastic cards and payment stickers have also been restored. QR-code payments work again at checkouts and in partner store apps. Payment and transfer functions were restored from last week. Pirogov said most questions now concern Split and credit products: Super Split card payments are being restored gradually and already work for millions of users, soon for everyone else; purchases can also be split, for example on Yandex Market. The outages began after drone attacks on the company’s data centres in Sasovo (Ryazan region), Kaluga and Vladimir on 8, 9 and 11 October. Interfax included this in its 22 October daily roundup.

According to the 2GIS maps and local services platform, the average price of a business lunch in Russian cities with over a million residents reached RUB 479 in October 2026, up 27.5% over two years. The sharpest increases were in Yekaterinburg (+37% to RUB 448), Omsk (+35.2% to RUB 378) and Perm (+32.7% to RUB 424); in Moscow business lunches rose 28.7% to RUB 547 and in Saint Petersburg 23.9% to RUB 440. Vedomosti notes that the number of venues offering business lunches keeps declining. Market participants surveyed differ: some restaurateurs say lunches have become more expensive in most venues, while some chains try to keep prices at 2024 levels to attract more visitors. The statistics cover catering only and do not relate to prices of goods on marketplaces.