“Many people decide to close their business and go to work where they can earn more.” “In recent months we have been doing business parkour: we constantly look around and quickly analyze what we can rely on,” Anatoly Yudin, co-owner of the Moscow chain of nail salons Milky, describes the state of the beauty industry. His business is more than ten years old, and at the beginning of 2026 he first experienced a sharp drop in revenue - compared to January last year, it fell by a quarter.

“I woke up at three in the morning and thought it was a thunderstorm.” For the first time in a long time, there is truly summer weather in St. Petersburg: it’s 20 degrees outside, the grayness and coolness are gone. The sun is shining in the sky above the city among rare clouds, against which a column of black smoke rises above the oil terminal burning on Kanonersky Island. This is the Kirovsky district of St.