Russia's depressed car market has shown weak signs of recovery as 2025 draws to an end, but is set to hit near-record lows early next year as higher scrappage fees drive up prices, dealers and experts say, Reuters reported. Far from signalling a genuine rebound, a jump in sales of new cars in October reflects a rush by buyers to complete purchases before the higher charges kick in, they say. The outlook highlights the structural crisis in Russia's auto sector that goes back to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Finnish fuel chain Teboil, which is owned by Russian oil major Lukoil filed for corporate restructuring on Friday, news agency STT reported, citing a court filing, according to Reuters. The United States last month hit Lukoil with sanctions over Moscow's war in Ukraine, disrupting the company's international business. Teboil had on Wednesday said it was preparing to shut down all its stations as fuel runs out. Earlier in the week it had said it expected Lukoil to sell the chain. It was the first of Lukoil's international businesses to say it would close down as a result of the sanctions.

Russian lawmakers endorsed new tax hikes on Tuesday as Moscow looks for new revenue sources to boost its economy during its nearly four-year war with Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. Legislators in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved the key second reading of a bill that will raise value-added tax from 20% to 22%. The changes are expected to add as much as 1 trillion rubles (about $12.3 billion) to the state budget.

Bilateral trade between Spain and Russia has shrunk in value, signaling a clear decision to decouple from the sanction-ridden nation, EuroNews.com reported. The Kremlin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago has had an undeniable effect on Spanish companies that aspired to open up markets in Russia, with the result that the volume of their exports has plummeted sharply since the beginning of the conflict.

For three years, a crack team of detectives gathered each weekday morning around a whiteboard at the German Federal Police headquarters in Potsdam, near Berlin. Now their investigation into who was behind the greatest act of sabotage in modern history—the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines—is threatening to splinter support for Ukraine, the country they hold responsible, the Wall Street Journal reported. Poland already has refused to extradite one of the suspects to stand trial in Germany.

Lukoil's international operations faced mounting disruptions on Friday as a U.S. deadline for companies to cut off business with the Russian oil company looms and after a hoped-for sale of the operations to Swiss trader Gunvor collapsed, Reuters reported. The U.S. Treasury, which would have to approve any sale as Lukoil is under U.S. sanctions, on Thursday labelled Gunvor a Kremlin "puppet" and signaled its opposition to the deal.

U.S. sanctions on Russian oil producer Rosneft have rekindled discussions in Germany about nationalising the company's business there, including a refinery that Berlin depends on for most of its fuel, two sources familiar with the talks told Reuters. The situation highlights the complex web linking Germany with Russia, which supplied Europe's industrial powerhouse with energy in the decades leading up to the war in Ukraine. The U.S. Treasury said on Wednesday it had issued a licence exempting Rosneft's German arm from the U.S.

The U.S.’s new sanctions hit at the core of Russia’s faltering war economy, bringing Washington and Europe into alignment in their pressure on Moscow for the first time since the start of the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal reported. Analysts say the impact of blacklisting Rosneft and Lukoil—Russia’s biggest oil producers—will hinge on three things: how well they are enforced, the reaction of major markets in India and China, and whether Moscow can circumvent the measures. The new U.S. sanctions “mark the most material move to date by the U.S.

The European Union has agreed on a new raft of sanctions against Russia targeting its shadow fleet of oil tankers and banning its imports of liquefied natural gas, the Danish EU presidency announced Thursday, The Canadian Press reported. “Today is a good day for Europe and Ukraine,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement, as EU leaders were gathering for a summit in Brussels.

Russia’s Federal Tax Service has filed a bankruptcy petition against the Tobol Timber Company, the largest timber firm in Siberia’s Tyumen region, over unpaid taxes exceeding 14.6 million rubles ($174,000), Russian media reported Tuesday, the Moscow Times reported. The Federal Tax Service asked a regional arbitration court to initiate bankruptcy proceedings after Tobol’s bank accounts were frozen on Sept. 12, according to Ura.ru.