Weekly inflation in Russia accelerated to 2.2%. This is the maximum since 1998

Inflation in Russia amounted to 2.2% in the week from February 26 to March 4. The week before, from February 19 to 25, this figure reached 0.45%. This was reported by Interfax, citing Rosstat data .

The weekly price increase was caused by the weakening of the ruble and increased demand for some goods, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development notes . "The main contribution to inflation was made by the growth of prices in the non-food segment (4.52%) with the rise in the price of cars, as well as electrical and household appliances. Prices for food products increased by 0.83% due to both the rise in the price of fruit and vegetable products and other food products," the department's review says.

Thus, new Russian passenger cars increased in price by 17.1%, new foreign ones by 15.2%, TVs by 15%, electric vacuum cleaners by 14.6%, and smartphones by 9.6%. Among food products, the prices increased the most for tomatoes (+7.7%), bananas (+7.2%) and sugar (+3.3%), among medicines - for levomekol (+6.1%), multivitamins (+5.9%) and ergoferon (+5.3%).

In turn, annual inflation in the country accelerated to 10.4% by March 4 for the first time since January 2016. For comparison, at the end of February this figure was at 9.15%.

• The significant weekly price increase was caused by the weakening ruble and sanctions imposed due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As Interfax notes, the last time such a weekly increase could be observed was in December 1998, when inflation for the month as a whole was 11.6%.
• After recognizing the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and the start of the war, Russia became the world leader in terms of the volume of sanctions imposed on it. Restrictions against the Russian Federation affected more than 5,500 entities in total.