cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50369053

Archived

[...]

A growing number of Russians are complaining about the rising cost of living, saying that increases in everything from utilities to food and alcohol are putting mounting strain on their wallets.

Social media has been flooded in recent weeks with videos showing shoppers comparing current prices with those of last year.

[...]

State statistics agency Rosstat says inflation stood at 5.6% at the end of 2025, while average prices for goods and services rose 4.2% in 2025.

The Central Bank has said that average wages are outpacing these increases, rising by 15% in 2025 and exceeding 100,000 rubles ($1,306) per month in 19 regions.

But there is a wide gap between these official figures and people’s lived experiences. A survey by the Public Opinion Foundation conducted for the Central Bank said perceived inflation — a measurement of how ordinary Russians experience rising prices — now stands at 14.5%.

[...]

Yelizaveta, a mother of several children from Moscow who heads a department at a Russian company, said she has recently switched to strict budgeting and started choosing the cheapest options when shopping for her family in response to the increasing prices.

“I’ve become more attentive to discounts,” Yelizaveta, 42, told The Moscow Times, adding that she now shops at the Pyaterochka grocery chain instead of the more expensive Perekrestok.

“There are certain products I just can’t give up, but apart from those exceptions, I look at the price first,” she said, adding that her family of five spends around 10,000 rubles ($130) a week on groceries.

Yelizaveta said she has stopped using beauty salons altogether and that paying for her children’s educational and extracurricular activities has become “almost impossible.”

[...]

Economist Vladislav Zhukovsky said public-sector workers and pensioners were particularly affected because wages, pensions and social benefits are indexed to the official inflation rate rather than the real inflation rate.

[...]

Rosstat data shows that items like lemons and coffee saw steep price rises in 2025, with per-kilogram prices up 31.8% and 25.8% respectively. Rents increased 22.1%.

[...]

Prices spiked in early January, when consumer prices rose 1.26% between Jan. 1 and 12. That is more than six times the increase recorded in the final tracked week of December, when Rosstat reported that consumer price growth had slowed to 0.2%.

[...]

According to Rosstat data, the largest price increases last month were seen in fruits and vegetables like cucumbers (34.4%), tomatoes (19.4%), potatoes (10.3%), carrots (8.3%) and cabbage (7.6%).

The anti-war economic project Prices Today reported that cucumbers recorded the sharpest increase of any product last month, rising 23.5%. Only seven of 108 product categories tracked by the project saw prices fall in January, including semolina flour, buckwheat, pearl barley, millet, peas, salt and sugar.

As ordinary Russians have taken to the internet to decry the price increases since the new year, officials have moved to downplay the concerns.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Credit Bank of Moscow posts a rare loss as bad loans surge.

Credit Bank of Moscow (MKB), Russia’s seventh-largest bank by assets and holder of around 700 billion rubles ($9.1 billion) in household deposits, reported a net loss of 9 billion rubles ($117 million) in the fourth quarter of 2025, Interfax reported, citing the bank’s financial statements.