Free Republic

Russia’s gasoline sales hit a two-year low on Tuesday as Ukrainian drone strikes and surging harvest-season demand intensify the country’s fuel shortage. Data from the St. Petersburg Exchange, reported by Kommersant on Wednesday, shows that sales of A-92 petrol dropped 21.7 percent to 15,600 metric tons on Tuesday, the lowest level since 2023. Sales of A-95 petrol fell 15.5 percent to 12,060 tons compared with the previous day, bringing total gasoline sales on the exchange down 19.1 percent to 27,700 tons. The sharp decline comes amid unscheduled shutdowns at several large Russian refineries, as Kyiv reportedly escalated its campaign against...

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia is deliberately slowing its economic growth in order to suppress inflation. "As for the decline from more than 4% GDP growth: this is not a decline, it is a deliberate action. It is a slowdown in growth in exchange for curbing inflation and maintaining macroeconomic stability," Putin said during a televised meeting with top lawmakers. A graph published in Russian central bank's report earlier in September showed two consecutive quarters of gross domestic product (GDP) decline in quarter-on-quarter terms, aligning with the common definition of a technical recession.

Vladimir Putin’s blundering chief TV propagandist has given away the top secret location of Russia’s most elite drone unit. An unburied toilet sign in a report by Vladimir Solovyov led to the Rubicon HQ being geolocated. The trail leads to Hall D and part of Hall C at the Patriot Exhibition Centre, near Moscow. The site has been already targeted by Ukrainian attack drones, and could be again. Solovyov is a highly-paid state TV propagandist for Putin and the war - and the careless blunder failing to mask the toilet signs in a report about Rubicon is a huge embarrassment....

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the number of Russian servicemen currently in the war zone in Ukraine, APA's Moscow bureau reports. He noted at a meeting with the leaders of the State Duma factions that more than 700,000 Russian servicemen are currently on the line of contact.

Russia's state oil and gas sales in September are set to fall by around 23% from a year earlier on lower prices and a stronger rouble, Reuters calculations show, hitting Moscow's biggest source of revenue. The projected decline comes as President Vladimir Putin and his economic officials are preparing Russia's 2026 budget while funding its highest military spending since the Cold War.

Ukraine has carried out a drone attack on a Gazprom-owned oil refinery in Bashkortostan, APA reports, citing Unian. The strike targeted the ELOU-AVT-4 unit of the facility No further details have been provided regarding the incident.