Wildberries denies cancelling the sale season, says 11.11, Black Frid…

According to the list of presidential instructions published on the Kremlin website, Vladimir Putin instructed the government to consider excluding one-off payments provided from regional budgets as additional support for families on the birth of a child from the types of income counted when calculating per-capita family income for the monthly child-rearing benefit. The government must report back by 1 June 2027. The unified benefit is paid to families with children under 17 based on income and property; it amounts to 50, 75 or 100% of the regional subsistence minimum for a child.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in Moscow for the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) summit. His administration's official website said that, besides attending and speaking at the summit, he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and several leaders of participating countries and discuss developing trade and economic cooperation. A few hours earlier, presidential aide Yury Ushakov said Putin would meet Pezeshkian and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on the sidelines, and hold talks with Mozambican President Daniel Chapo, Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Libyan Presidential Council chairman Mohammed Menfi. The GECF summit will be held in Moscow on 27 October.

The FSB said two men born in the Transcaucasus were detained and remanded in custody; acting on instructions from a Ukrainian special service, they delivered drones for an attack on a key element of Moscow's missile-defence system and on an energy facility. The detainees were born in 1991 and 1998; one was recruited by an SBU officer and then brought in an acquaintance. In Smolensk and Kaluga regions they retrieved FPV drones and components of improvised explosive devices from a cache; their task was to configure strike drones, deliver them to a launch point in Moscow region and switch on the devices before take-off, with further control to be exercised remotely from Ukrainian territory. The FSB investigative directorate opened a criminal case under Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Russian Criminal Code (participation in a terrorist community).

Burkina Faso Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo arrived in Moscow to take part in the third Russia–Africa summit, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the scene. The third Russia–Africa summit will be held in Moscow on 28–29 October. RIA noted that Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Borisenko had earlier described Ouagadougou as one of Moscow's priority partners on the African continent.

A joint international press centre for the 8th GECF summit of heads of state and government and the third Russia–Africa summit opened in Moscow at the Russia National Centre. It will operate round the clock from 26 to 30 October inclusive for media representatives who have been accredited and received badges. The Kremlin press service said about 1,700 media representatives from 70 states have already been accredited. On its opening day the press centre was visited by foreign journalists arriving for the summits, who were also given a tour of the Russia National Centre.

Russia's ambassador in Minsk, Boris Gryzlov, said in an interview with the National Defence magazine that the CSTO needs to strengthen its analytical and forecasting work because of the hybrid nature of threats and the development of artificial intelligence. He said the CSTO is successfully coping with its tasks in the current difficult situation, but the situation in the world and in the organisation's area of responsibility is changing very fast. "The threats are hybrid in nature: military-political pressure is combined with information, economic and other attacks. One cannot ignore the development of artificial intelligence, which, for all its great creative potential, carries obvious risks," he said. He recalled that CSTO forces were used at the recent Centre-2026 exercises: seven countries sent military contingents and 51 states sent observers. On 10–11 November Moscow will host a session of the CSTO Collective Security Council and meetings of the councils of foreign and defence ministers and the committee of security council secretaries; decisions aimed at strengthening the collective security system are expected to be signed.

The front-month natural gas futures price on the Dutch TTF hub rose above 97 euros per MWh on Monday for the first time since 2022. As of 11:47 Moscow time the contract was up 3.8% at 97.45 euros per MWh. Driven by the gas rally, French power futures rose above 200 euros per MWh for the first time since January 2023. Trading Economics noted that escalation of the Middle East conflict has heightened concerns about winter gas stocks: LNG supplies from Persian Gulf countries, which before the war accounted for about 20% of global supply, are roughly five times below year-earlier levels. As of 25 October, European underground gas storage stood at 74.62%, 14.92 percentage points below the five-year average for that date.

Presidential special representative for relations with international organisations on sustainable development goals, Boris Titov, said at the UNCTAD World Investment Forum in Doha that tax receipts from small and medium-sized businesses in Russia have risen 2.5-fold since 2018, reaching 13 trillion roubles at the end of 2025; his remarks were relayed to Gazeta.Ru by his assistant. He attributed the trend to digitalisation of interaction between entrepreneurs and the state: Russian solutions make it possible to combine business registration, tax procedures and banking services on a one-stop basis, with the number of MSE entities having grown by almost 1 million since 2018 and the number of registered self-employed now exceeding 17 million. He also said access to credit had expanded 2.8-fold and the volume of suspicious transactions had fallen by 64%.

According to Chinese customs data analysed by RIA Novosti, in September 2026 China shipped $33.6m worth of skincare and decorative cosmetics to Russia, the highest figure in the two countries' trade history — up 2.2-fold year on year and 45% month on month. Skincare products and foundation accounted for the largest share at $18.5m; lip make-up reached $5.6m, eye make-up $5.57m, powders $3.3m, and manicure and pedicure products $558,000. Over three quarters Chinese companies shipped $191.4m of cosmetics to Russian partners, 1.7 times more than a year earlier. China's total cosmetics exports in September amounted to $582.3m; the top five buyers were the United States ($132.4m), the United Kingdom ($41.1m), Russia, Indonesia ($22.7m) and Brazil ($22.1m).

The National Bank of Ukraine lowered the hryvnia's rate against the US dollar: for 27 October the official rate was set at 45.54 hryvnias per dollar, a depreciation of 34 kopecks in a day. The euro rate for 27 October rose to 50.95 hryvnias, 38 kopecks more than the previous trading day. The NBU's official dollar rate for 26 October 2026 was 45.20 hryvnias per $1.

Rospotrebnadzor reported a registered imported case of Zika fever in Russia: the disease was detected in September in a woman who returned to Moscow after a holiday in Bali, and she was admitted to an infectious diseases hospital. The patient's biomaterial was examined at an authorised institution of the service and the diagnosis was confirmed. The service ruled out the risk of domestic spread: mosquitoes in Russia do not carry high epidemiological risk as vectors of dangerous tropical fevers; the main risk comes from importation by travellers returning from affected regions, including certain countries in the Americas, South and South-East Asia. Rospotrebnadzor research institutions have developed domestic test systems for rapid diagnosis; tourists in tropical countries are advised to use repellents, wear light-coloured long-sleeved clothing and use mosquito nets, and to see a doctor immediately if fever, rash, conjunctivitis or muscle and joint pain appear after travel.

Alexander Kolesov, head of the regional hydrometeorological centre, said on Monday that St Petersburg has set two overnight temperature records. He said that overnight the temperature was around plus 12–13 degrees, with the minimum of plus 11.7 degrees at 02:30, a new record for the night of 26 October for the entire observation series; the previous maximum of plus 9.6 degrees was recorded in 1937. Saturday night was also record warm at plus 9.8 degrees; before that, the warmest night for 25 October in the city was plus 8.8 degrees in 1934.

Voronezh region governor Alexander Gusev reported two dead and 17 injured as a result of a mass drone attack on Voronezh overnight and early in the morning. He said air-defence forces detected and destroyed 113 unmanned aerial vehicles over the Voronezh conurbation and several districts of the region, with more than 70 drones shot down directly over Voronezh. According to updated data, the two dead were men born in 1960 and 1973, and 17 people, including one child, were wounded. A significant part of the wounded, including two in serious condition, were injured on a train travelling in a left-bank suburb of Voronezh when drone debris fell on it. Fires broke out at several industrial enterprises (without significant consequences), a business centre in the city centre, an apartment building, two dacha settlements, a school stadium and a garage cooperative; damage to facades and windows is reported in almost all city districts.

Overnight in Sverdlovsk region, 39 cars of a freight train — not 20 — derailed, the regional emergencies ministry clarified. Seven tank cars caught fire after the incident; what they were carrying was not specified. There is no information on casualties. The fire was localised over an area of 1,500 square metres, with more than 300 people involved in extinguishing it. Freight train traffic on the section was suspended and adjacent tracks were also damaged. Rospotrebnadzor is checking air quality in the area of the nearest residential development.

Police are establishing the circumstances of a traffic accident involving a scheduled bus in the Novosibirsk district of Novosibirsk region, the regional interior ministry's press service said. It was preliminarily established that the driver lost control and the bus ran into a roadside ditch. "The number of victims is being clarified; according to preliminary information, eight people sought medical help," the statement said. A traffic police crew is working at the scene.

From January to September 2026, Sber clients received 2.11 trillion roubles of interest income on deposits and savings accounts, the bank's press service said. Term deposits accounted for the bulk: clients earned 1.79 trillion roubles on them and opened 22.9 million such products over nine months. Sber accrued a further 321.4 billion roubles on savings accounts, with clients opening 8.03 million such accounts from January to September. Since the start of 2026 the bank's clients have opened 30.9 million deposits and savings accounts in total.

Gazeta.Ru, citing Interfax, reported that Microsoft Corp. has announced a compensated voluntary redundancy programme affecting roughly 60,000 employees. The initiative is aimed at optimising costs and covers staff at vice-president level and below; data-centre specialists and employees of sales and marketing departments are not affected. Employees who choose to leave will receive severance ranging from one to six monthly salaries depending on length of service and position, plus additional benefits such as health insurance; this follows a July programme for employees of retirement age, taken up by about a third of those eligible. Microsoft's headcount remains stable at 223,000 at the end of June, almost unchanged since 2022, when the company began large-scale investment in AI. Against this news Microsoft shares rose 1%, with market capitalisation up almost 10% since the start of the year to $3.9 trillion.

Draft joint orders of the Russian education ministry and the federal education and science supervisory service, published on the federal portal of draft normative legal acts, provide for the 2027 unified state exam (EGE) main period from 1 June to 9 July, and the ninth-grade basic state exam (OGE) main period from 2 June to 5 July. According to the explanatory note, the EGE early period is planned for 19 March – 19 April 2027 and the additional period for 3–24 September 2027. The main period opens on 1 June with history, literature and chemistry; 4 June Russian; 7 June mathematics (basic and advanced); 10 June social studies and physics; 15 June biology, geography and the written part of foreign languages; 18–19 June computer science and the oral part of foreign languages. Reserve days for all subjects are set for 21, 23, 25 and 26 June, with 8 and 9 July allowing this year's graduates to retake one subject of their choice. Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said the school curriculum and exam tasks are strictly synchronised and students will never be asked something they were not taught at school; he emphasised the guaranteed right to retake one subject until the end of the campaign. Public discussion of the drafts runs until 10 November.

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, speaking at the 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum, called for an expert council involving AI specialists from member states to be created within the BRICS parliamentary dimension, which he said would allow the exchange of best legislative practices. In his view AI brings not only opportunities but also challenges; it is important to ensure that AI serves people and that no situation arises in which it begins to govern humanity, which requires legislative consolidation not only at national level but also within BRICS and the UN. He also proposed more active interaction at the level of specialised committees of BRICS parliaments, noting that the annual parliamentary forums offer a chance to exchange experience. Volodin is heading a delegation of Russian parliamentarians on a working visit to India — his first foreign trip since being elected chairman of the new Duma; on Sunday he met the speaker of India's Lok Sabha, Om Birla.

RWB's press service said reports that Wildberries had cancelled discounts are untrue: the sale season has already started and three major campaigns will follow — 11.11, Black Friday and New Year. The company said all three campaigns will cover the main product categories and that the number of discounted offers will keep growing this year, with the assortment on Wildberries having grown several-fold versus last year. Product popularity and seller activity are taken into account ahead of the campaigns. The report also recalls that Forbes, citing market participants, had said a day earlier that summer drone attacks on marketplace warehouses had affected sellers' readiness for the sale season, with most sellers unable to recover money for burnt goods and therefore halting new purchases.

Yandex commented on the state of its supercomputers for the first time since the early-October strikes on its data centres. The company says the Chervonenkis, Lyapunov and Galushkin machines were not damaged and have been moved to new locations, where they will soon resume operation. Its press release says the supercomputers will continue to serve as infrastructure for Yandex services and for training foundational language models. The report notes that the three machines were housed at the data centres in Sasovo (Ryazan region) and Vladimir that were hit in early October, and are used to train neural networks including YandexGPT.

According to the INFOLine Rail Russia Top ranking, operating rates for gondola cars — the largest Russian freight segment — recovered from a winter low of about 620 roubles per car per day to 740 roubles in June, but the increase is still not enough to cover the higher cost of repairs and investment in new cars. First Freight Company (PGK) says scheduled repair costs stabilised in Q2, yet repair spending on some gondola cars is not recouped by expected revenue, so taking them out of service is a natural economic response. The top three in the ranking are PGK, Federal Freight Company and National Transport Company. INFOLine data show new gondola car purchases fell 45% in H1 to 7,500 units while about 8,000 were scrapped. PGK also says about 19% of gondola cars are actually faulty, and the available reserve of serviceable unused cars shrank by roughly 6,000 in a month to 29,000 units.

According to a rendering of Far East Development Minister Aleksey Chekunkov's presentation, cargo volume on the Northern Sea Route reached 33 million tonnes by the start of Q4, 17% more than a year earlier. Transit volumes grew about 1.5x, from 3.2m to 4.8m tonnes. The materials say two nuclear icebreakers, two hydrographic vessels and five emergency rescue ships have been built for the route's development, and four satellites launched. By 2035 the plan calls for four more nuclear icebreakers, three emergency rescue centres, 41 rescue fleet vessels and 11 satellite launches.

The Spot.uz news portal, citing sources, reports that Uzbekistan's government plans to introduce an annual sugar import quota of 300,000 tonnes from 2027 — 100,000 tonnes each for beverage, confectionery and other food producers. The report says the decision was taken back in June but the relevant resolution was never published. Quotas are to be allocated through electronic online auctions, with the system due to launch before 1 December 2026 and to be integrated with the Uzbek customs committee's Single Window information system; auction results will be published openly. The quota can be reviewed every six months against domestic consumption, capacity utilisation, import prices and domestic prices, with the next year's quota to be approved by the cabinet in November. The economy and finance ministry has one month to draft tax-code amendments that would exempt local sugar producers from profit tax and set property tax at 50% until 1 January 2031.

In January–June 2026 at least 320,300 cases of counterfeit goods sold online were recorded in Russia, 57% more than a year earlier (another report citing the same data gives 56.9%). According to that report, fakes are most common in high-demand, relatively high-basket categories — clothing, footwear, cosmetics, perfumery and household chemicals. Marketplaces accounted for 223,900 cases (up 69.9%), messaging apps for 18,600 (up 66.3%) and social networks for 15,800 (up more than twofold). The data come from the BrandSecurity platform. Its founder links the trend to a growing number of foreign sellers on Russian online platforms, who copy original product cards and then offer fakes at cut prices. The first vice-president of the Anti-Counterfeit association gave an example where only 8% of 400 brand listings on marketplaces were genuine. The report also notes that Russia's Constitutional Court previously held that marketplaces, as information intermediaries, may not bear liability for counterfeit sales.

The Association of Banks of Russia wrote to the head of the Digital Development Ministry proposing that installation of the ministry's National Certification Centre security certificates be made mandatory — at the moment a user downloads or updates a Russian app. Other proposals include a programme for simplified installation of domestic certificates on Windows and other operating systems popular in Russia, and having device manufacturers pre-install certificates at the production stage. The report recalls that in summer this year Russian users hit problems logging into bank websites via foreign browsers Chrome, Safari and Edge, seeing an unsafe-connection warning or being blocked outright, caused by the revocation of foreign SSL certificates that has been under way since 2022. A law passed that same summer takes effect in March 2027: Russian banks may refuse customers transfers from mobile devices and logins via web versions if malware is detected, offering instead a secure device or a branch visit.

According to the A.List analytics project, in January–September 2026 the share of Russian standard whiskey in the sales mix of Russia's largest retail chains rose 13.9 percentage points to 17.6%. Over the period 611,600 decalitres were sold domestically, up 4.7x year on year. The leading brand was Fowler's (276,400 dal), followed by MacCallister (186,700) and Fire & Wood (about 53,800), then Western Ranger (19,100) and Bill McLean (16,900). Experts link the demand growth partly to the lower price versus Western products: after minimum retail prices on aged whiskey were introduced at the start of the year, that alcohol became noticeably more expensive domestically and consumers switched to cheaper Russian products. The authors expect the trend to persist in the medium term against the backdrop of plans to raise import duties again on alcohol from the EU and the US.

On 26 October the Bank of Russia issued methodological guidance for credit institutions on identifying the source of funds when clients carry out large cash operations, so that banks can promptly detect suspicious transactions aimed at laundering criminal proceeds, including channelling shadow cash into legal circulation. For individuals the main criterion is operations of 5m roubles or more in a single transaction or in aggregate over a month. For legal entities and sole traders the previous 30m-rouble monthly threshold has been removed: any cash operation by a legal entity is now treated as potentially suspicious. The CBR stresses the measures affect a narrow client segment and do not affect law-abiding citizens. Banks may waive the guidance where a corporate or sole-trader client's business is inherently cash-based (e.g. retail trade), except where incoming cash significantly exceeds average monthly turnover or grows sharply. The regulator notes the document consolidates and cancels earlier guidance on the subject and complies with FATF principles.

On the coverage day the Bank of Russia published a new set of official rates effective 27 October: USD 80.4909 roubles (down 4.72 kopecks), EUR 90.0935 (down 14.94 kopecks) and CNY 12.0680. The set in force during the coverage day itself was the one published on 24 October — USD 80.5381, EUR 90.2429, CNY 12.0557 — because 25 October fell on a Sunday and no new set was issued. The regulator explains that since 8 June, low turnover in the rouble/euro pair has made daily direct calculation unrepresentative, so the official euro rate is derived from the rouble/dollar rate and the ECB's euro/dollar rate as of 15:30 Moscow time on the current business day.

On 26 October the yuan edged up on the Moscow Exchange to 12.0855 roubles by 19:00 Moscow time, 2.15 kopecks above the previous close. The report attributes the rouble's slight weakening to weaker oil prices, while exporter tax preparations continue to support it. Exporters must pay personal income tax, insurance contributions, mineral extraction tax, VAT, excises, profit tax and the additional income tax on Wednesday 28 October. The same day European gas futures exceeded EUR 97 per MWh for the first time since 2022, and December Brent futures traded at $117.11 a barrel by 19:00 Moscow time. An analyst quoted in the piece also cited large dividend payments by key exporters and the inflow of FX revenue generated at September's peak oil prices as supporting the rouble.

According to Gazprombank's 'External sector: FX supply is growing' review, higher export prices and upcoming tax payments created conditions for a stronger rouble in October. In September exporters' FX sales rose $4.9bn from August to $23.7bn, but most of that gain was absorbed by higher FX purchases from non-financial companies, up $4.5bn to $17.3bn. By end-September the yuan rate was down 1.2% from end-August at 12.58 roubles, though on a monthly average the rouble was still weakening. Meanwhile FX sales by the largest exporters tracked separately by the CBR fell $0.3bn to $2.1bn, the lowest since 2022; the bank's analysts suggest part of large companies' revenue may be converted via intermediaries and not captured in that measure. The bank estimates October FX supply will be supported by proceeds from higher-priced exports and payment of the quarterly additional income tax, with tax receipts potentially rising to RUB 0.8–1trn versus RUB 0.5trn in September.

The European Commission has accepted Chinese marketplace Temu's proposals to remedy breaches of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). The company drew up the plan after being fined EUR 200m in May for insufficient efforts to prevent the sale of illegal goods. The plan is to identify loopholes exploited by sellers of prohibited or dangerous goods and to set clear criteria for assessing how effectively its own services eliminate violations; experts must also analyse whether the site's own algorithms help promote and advertise illegal goods. Temu has four months to carry out an interim assessment to ensure further implementation. This item is aimed at Chinese cross-border sellers who also operate on EU marketplaces: it concerns EU regulation, not requirements inside Russia.

The Bank of Russia's banking sector review shows net profit at Russian banks fell 5.9% (down RUB 26bn) in September to RUB 414bn, mainly due to lower non-core income. Return on capital fell to 23% from 24% annualised. Core profit rose slightly (+RUB 18bn, +4%) to RUB 448bn thanks to lower provisioning at RUB 165bn (−RUB 43bn); the CBR notes banks recognised fewer losses on non-core business investments (−RUB 35bn). Non-core (volatile) income dropped 72% (−RUB 102bn) to RUB 40bn: dividends from subsidiaries fell RUB 40bn (−69%), securities operations swung to a loss from August income (−RUB 40bn, including negative revaluation), and income from FX and precious metals operations fell RUB 18bn (−35%) on the stronger rouble. Summing monthly results, the sector earned just over RUB 3.6trn of net profit in 9M 2026, above the RUB 3.5trn for all of 2025; the CBR earlier raised its 2026 sector profit forecast by RUB 0.5trn to RUB 3.9–4.4trn.