Why did the Russian ruble plunge? PRO Members Public
Hello! Welcome to your weekly guide to the Russian economy – written by Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr and brought to you by The Bell. Our top story this week is about Russia’s currency crisis that saw the ruble slump 10% in two days. We also look at why Russia’
Writing off debts: Russia’s new army recruitment strategy PRO Members Public
Vladimir Putin has signed a new law to write off the loans of fresh recruits to the war. This latest preferential credit scheme is clearly intended to lure as many people as possible to the front line. * According to the newly-signed law, military personnel who sign up after Dec. 1,
New U.S. sanctions push the ruble to its lowest since spring 2022 PRO Members Public
The United States has imposed the most wide-reaching range of banking sanctions on Russia since spring 2022 (read more here), hitting leading state institution Gazprombank, which had remained connected to SWIFT and conducted settlements in euros. The fallout of the potential disruption on Russia’s energy trade pushed the ruble
Putin’s missile escalation PRO Members Public
The war in Ukraine ratched up dramatically this week, with tensions running at arguably their highest level in the near three-year conflict. Kyiv, with the support of its Western allies, used US-supplied ATACMS and British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside Russian territory for the first time. Russia responded with
THE BELL WEEKLY: How Putin fell in love with hypersonic missiles PRO Members Public
Hello! This week we look into Russia’s hypersonic missile development program, after Russia fired one on Ukraine, the first time a device of its type has been used in combat. We also analyze the latest fall in the value of the ruble and how Russia plans to write off
Nabiullina defends high interest rates PRO Members Public
Hello! Welcome to your weekly guide to the Russian economy – written by Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko and brought to you by The Bell. Our top story this week is a look at Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullin’s defense of a tight monetary policy in the face of sustained
Russia’s rising stagflation threat PRO Members Public
Hello! Welcome to your weekly guide to the Russian economy—written by Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko and brought to you by The Bell. Our top story this week is the growing prospect that the Russian economy will enter a period of stagflation. We also look at a campaign by
What a Trump presidency means for the Russian economy PRO Members Public
Hello! Welcome to your weekly guide to the Russian economy—written by Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr and brought to you by The Bell. Our top story this week is a look at how Russia reacted to the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and what it might
Can we trust Russian economic statistics? PRO Members Public
Since the start of the war, the Russian authorities have classified heaps of important statistical and economic data. For the third year in a row, Moscow is not publishing figures on imports, exports, foreign trade, gold and foreign exchange reserves, or oil production. But can the data that Moscow still
Narrow victory for Moldova’s pro-European president PRO Members Public
A week after Georgia held crunch parliamentary elections, another former Soviet republic with EU ambitions went to the polls, as Moldovans voted in a presidential contest. The situation in Moldova, which was recently granted EU candidate states, was the reverse of that in Georgia — pro-EU president Maia Sandu was looking
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The Bell was founded in 2017 by journalists Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Irina Malkova and Peter Mironenko as a news outlet independent from the Russian authorities, after its founders have been sacked as top editors at the largest Russian news website RBC because of pressure from the Kremlin.
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