Days after locking in its most pliant Duma in a generation, Moscow billed its own people for the war: new taxes on savings, online shoppers, and miners, while defence stayed untouchable. The oil windfall made restraint look affordable; the runway it buys is not. Russia Analytical Digest — 18–25 September 2026 A weekly strategic read…

Russia's first wartime parliamentary election opened this week as an exercise in manufacturing a mandate rather than measuring one. Record remote-voting tallies ran against near-empty physical polling stations, a third of Yabloko's candidates were culled before day one, and the one party able to absorb anti-war votes was barred from the ballot nationwide — all…

Russia built the week to read as calm: Sunday’s State Duma election staged to project steadiness, the central bank pausing its rate cuts for the first time in a year, holding the key rate at 14 percent. The calm was the staging, not the substance. Beneath it, the federal budget deficit has run to roughly…

Russia Analytical Digest — week ending 2026-09-06 A weekly strategic read on the Russian Federation — the war economy, domestic politics, and international relations. Each metric gives its latest available reading, the trend against the prior period, and a risk-of-strain verdict (green: contained; yellow: under pressure; orange: acute). Sources are linked directly. The wartime economic…

Russia's war is now being paid for where its voters live. This week the Kremlin crossed a fiscal line it had held for three years of war: it moved to cut every civilian line of the federal budget by roughly a third and lay off officials — shielding only defence and social payments — while…

Russia's treasury spent the equivalent of a full year's budget shortfall in the first seven months, then kept going. Russia Analytical Digest — 17–24 August 2026 A weekly strategic read on the Russian Federation — the war economy, domestic politics, and international relations. Each metric gives its latest available reading, the trend against the prior…