Russia's largest bank Sberbank is considering selling 1.1 billion euros (920.1 million pounds) in loans it granted to indebted Croatian food and retail group Agrokor, Sberbank's First Deputy Chairman Maxim Poletayev said, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "We are also considering a possibility of selling Agrokor's debt and are in talks with buyers on the international markets," Poletayev said in an interview with Reuters.

Russia won an early verdict in a London lawsuit that may force Ukraine to repay part of a defaulted $3 billion bond, in a dispute that extended the battle over Russia’s annexation of Crimea into a U.K courtroom, Bloomberg News reported. Judge William Blair threw out all of Ukraine’s arguments Wednesday, saying he was at pains to distinguish between the law and the "troubling" political background. He ruled the case shouldn’t go to a full trial but gave Ukraine the right to appeal.

When Alexei Kudrin was tasked last year with drawing up a new economic strategy for Russia, there were good reasons for the country’s leadership to countenance previously unpalatable reforms, the Financial Times reported. With the crash in oil prices, the effects of sanctions and the fall in the rouble eroding real incomes and squeezing public finances, there was a genuine fear of protest from a middle class accustomed to greater comfort.

Criminal prosecutions have been opened against more than 100,000 businesspeople in Russia in the first half of this year as part of a growing problem that is devastating the Russian economy, an expert on the topic has told a Dublin audience, the Irish Times reported.

Russian state development bank VEB will manage to pay back outstanding debt next year though it will be difficult, the bank's chairman Sergei Gorkov said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Gorkov said VEB had to pay back around 250 billion rubles ($3.9 billion) in outstanding debt next year but Russia's state spending plan envisages only 150 billion rubles for repayment of its debt. "Indeed, it will be tough for us, not an easy task... but we will manage," Gorkov told reporters.

Rosneftegaz, the state holding company that controls Russian oil major Rosneft, is considering helping Rosneft finance the buyback of some of its shares in Rosneft, three sources with knowledge of the discussions said, Reuters reported. The Russian state is preparing to sell a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft, the biggest Russian oil producer and one of the largest in the world, as part of a privatization scheme intended to plug holes in the budget this year.

Russian metals and mining giant Mechel plans to sign a final debt-restructuring deal in early 2017, its chief financial officer told Reuters, concluding more than two years of negotiations on a burden that has threatened its survival. Mechel borrowed heavily before Russia's economic crisis and struggled to keep up repayments as demand for its products weakened alongside tumbling coal and steel prices.

When Elvira Nabiullina took over as governor of Russia’s central bank, she came face to face with a sobering statistic: regulators listed as many as 150 banks that were regularly involved in dubious transactions, the Financial Times reported. Today, after an unprecedented three-year purge of the dark corners of Russian finance, that number is down to “no more than about 10”, Ms Nabiullina says. And she is only just getting started.

The cost of insuring Russian debt using credit-default swaps fell to a three-week low as tensions with Ukraine eased, offering relief from mounting political risk that had weighed on assets last month, Bloomberg News reported. Investors welcomed the diminished political strife and signs Russia is seeking to end its isolation under U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine, said Piotr Matys, a currency strategist at Rabobank in London.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Moscow has no money available to raise pensions further in line with last year’s high inflation rate, news that is likely to be unwelcome ahead of parliamentary elections in September, The Wall Street Journal reported. “We don’t possess enough resources to carry out [an] extra pension adjustment,” Mr. Medvedev said Tuesday at a meeting with government officials. The cost of living has skyrocketed in Russia in recent months, driven by a massive drop in the ruble’s value and the government’s ban on Western food imports.