Russia

Russian consumer prices grew by 9.52% last year compared to 7.42% in 2023, final statistical data showed on Wednesday, making the 2024 inflation rate the fourth highest in the last 15 years, Reuters reported. Russian consumer price growth exceeded 10% in 2022, the year Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and during the economic crisis of 2014-15, following the annexation of Crimea. Inflation has become a major headache in Russia's overheated economy, where growth is fuelled by the state's military spending.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that the potential bankruptcy or sale of the operator of the completed but never launched Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would amount to "theft," Reuters reported. Lavrov, speaking at a news conference in Moscow, was commenting on the matter after a court in Switzerland extended the deadline for Nord Stream 2 AG, a unit of Russia's Gazprom to restructure its debts to May 9 from Jan. 10. The court also said that Swiss-registered Nord Stream 2 AG had to pay off its debts to small-scale creditors in full within 60 days.

Russia’s Gazprom PJSC will halt natural gas supplies to Moldova starting on Jan. 1 due to an alleged debt impasse amid a state of emergency in the Eastern European nation’s energy sector, Bloomberg News reported. The notification sent to Moldovagaz on Saturday said the company “regularly fails to fulfill its payment obligations under the existing contract, which is a significant breach of its terms,” the Russian gas giant said in statement on Telegram. Gas flows to Moldova will be reduced to zero from 8 a.m. Moscow time on Jan.

The Bank of Russia held its key interest rate at a record-high 21%, surprising most analysts who’d expected policymakers to opt for another big hike to try to tame persistent inflation, Bloomberg News reported. Six of 12 economists had predicted a two percentage-point increase, while two foresaw a hike to 24% and only two saw a hold. Price growth continues to run at more than twice the central bank’s 4% target.

Long feted as the savior of Russia’s economy in the face of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina is increasingly under attack from officials who say she’s now destroying it with record high interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Nabiullina faces rising criticism within the Russian political and business elite ahead of the bank’s final rate-setting meeting of the year on Friday. Analysts forecast that policymakers may hike the key interest rate to 23% from 21% now, and possibly as high as 24% to curb persistent high inflation.

The Biden administration transferred $20 billion to Ukraine on Tuesday, providing an urgently needed economic lifeline in the form of a loan that will be repaid using interest earned from Russia’s frozen central bank assets, the New York Times reported. The transfer of the funds comes as Ukraine is facing a period of grave uncertainty with President-elect Donald J. Trump poised to take office next month and Russia’s war continuing unabated. Mr.

Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline lost the latest round of its legal fight against European Union gas market rules, in a largely symbolic court defeat for the now-shuttered project, Bloomberg News reported. Gazprom PJSC-controlled Nord Stream 2 should have foreseen that the bloc would use its powers to “extend the internal market rules to cover gas pipelines from third countries,” the General Court said in its re-examination of the case on Wednesday.

Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate to the highest level since the invasion of Ukraine as it struggles to cool an overheating economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Russia on Friday lifted borrowing costs for the third straight meeting, to 21% from 19%. The key rate was last near that high in late February 2022 when the central bank countered a slump in the ruble that followed the start of a lengthening war on the country’s neighbor.