The Bank of Russia lowered the key rate by 50 basis points, from 16% per annum to 15.5%. This is stated in a press release from the Central Bank. “The economy continues to return to a trajectory of balanced growth,” the regulator believes. The Central Bank also stated that they plan to reduce the rate further. “The base scenario assumes an average key rate in the range of 13.5–14.5% per annum in 2026. This means maintaining tight monetary conditions,” the regulator said in a press release.

Rosstat has stopped publishing some of the data on household expenses and income, as well as data on the number and salaries of civil servants, the project “To Be Precise” drew attention to. Thus, Rosstat’s statistical collections did not include part of the data from the “Sample Survey of Household Budgets” (HBS) for 2024. Of the 24 indicators on the Rosstat website, only two have been updated. In addition, the data was no longer updated in the EMISS register of state statistics.

Fact check Opinions How they kill in Russian schools The most common weapon is a knife, the most common motive is revenge for bullying Date13 Feb. 2026Authors Yuri Lapshin (school psychologist), Alexandra Arkhipova (social anthropologist) Relatives of a Tajik boy killed on December 16, 2025 in Gorki-2 near Moscow. Photo: MAXIM SHIPENKOV / EPA / Scanpix / LETA In the first month and a half of 2026, there were six attacks on schools in Russia. Over the entire last year - 15, since 2014 - 90.

This is a record share since the pandemic year of 2020 Losses of Russian companies for 11 months of last year amounted to 7.5 trillion rubles, which was a record for all years. Izvestia writes about this with reference to the Rosstat report “The Socio-Economic Situation of Russia.” According to the study, from January to November 2025, 18.2 thousand companies declared losses in the amount of 7,535.1 billion rubles. The share of unprofitable enterprises among all companies was 28.8%.

Some conscripts, who were forced to sign a contract on the train to their duty station in Ussuriysk in January, managed to get their contract terminated by the Ministry of Defense. Relatives of two conscripts told Important Stories about this.

The Russian authorities could spend up to 5.1 trillion rubles on recruiting hundreds of thousands of contract soldiers to carry out an offensive in the territory of the Donetsk region that remains under the control of Kiev, the analytical project re:Russia has calculated . This amount is comparable to 90% of the 2025 federal budget deficit. According to analysts, about 1 trillion rubles a year may be spent on payments to contract workers from regional budgets.