0906GMT/April 25 2025
TEACHERS'S PAY COMPLAINTS: Teachers in some of Russia's regions are refusing to organise end-of-year exams until they get a pay rise, the Izvestia newspaper reported on Thursday. (COMMENT: This is part of the 'inflation in Russia' story. Teachers and other municipal workers have not had the same pay rises as Russian soldiers and munitions workers. Instead, they have just suffered from the inflation.)
TURNING CINEMAS INTO GYMS: Formula Kino and Cinema Park, the largest cinema chain in Russia, will lease part of its premises to fitness clubs and gyms. CEO Alexei Vazaysin told RBK that the number of people going to the cinema in Russia has collapsed because Western films are banned.
RAIFFSEN'S WOES: An appeals court in St Petersburg on Thursday upheld a 2 billion euro fine against Austria's Raiffeisen Bank, the largest Western bank still doing business in Russia. (NOTE: Last year, Raiffeisen had tried to buy Vienna-based Strabag from Russia's Rasperia Trading. Raiffeisen pushed for the deal as a way to claw back frozen Russian assets but it was blocked by Western regulators. In January, a commercial court in Russia ordered Raiffeisen to pay 2 billion euros in damages to Rasperia, previously owned by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska.) (COMMENT: The award for damages against Raiffeisen shows the perils for Western companies of doing business in Russia.)
ONLINE STREAMING BOOM: Russia's online streaming market will double by 2029 to 2 trillion roubles $24 billion), Olga Filipuk, the head of Russian tech giant Yandex's Fantech division, told Forbes in an interview. (NOTE: Filipuk was talking about offline and online events. Her insight shows the size of the Russian market and why Western companies are so keen to get back into it.)
PRIGOZHIN'S BUSINESS WINDS UP: Concord Group, the catering company owned by Russia's former mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, has sold its main kitchen in Moscow. (NOTE: Concord lost a lucrative contract to supply Russia's army with food after Prigozhin's failed mutiny against the Kremlin in 2023. He died in August 2023 when a bomb planted by a Kremlin agent exploded on his private jet. The Moscow kitchen was the last major asset owned by Concord. Other parts of the business have been steadily sold off since 2023. Concord had produced 100,000 ratios for the Russian Army every day.)
BANK PROFIT RISE: Russia's VTB Bank reported Q1 profit of 141 billion roubles ($1.7 billion), up 15.4% because of a rise in income earned from loans. Discussing the results with journalists on a conference call a VTB deputy chairman described Russia's 21% interest rate level as an "experimental antibiotic" that the patient has to risk to become healthy. (COMMENT: VTB's results have to be taken in context. The increase in profit is linked to high interest rates and a rise in income earned by people living in the regions. These families have benefited hugely from salary rises for munitions factory workers and soldiers. Russian economists, though, have warned that Russia's mortgage sector is shrinking.)
MIDEAST TALKS: Russian diplomats have begun talks on the Middle East with Turkey in Istanbul. (NOTE: This suggests a rehabilitation of Russia in the Middle East. It was humiliated last year when Syria, a client state, collapsed, allowing a Turkey-backed rebel government to take control.)
WITKOFF FLIES TO MOSCOW: Plane tracking websites show that a plane from the US has now entered Russian airspace. (NOTE: Commentators have said that this is likely to be carrying Steve Witkoff, Trump's personal envoy and the man who has been trusted with striking a Ukraine peace deal with Putin. Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, also confirmed that Putin was due to meet with Witkoff today.)
PEACE TALKS: Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of Russia's Security Council, has become the latest high-profile Kremlin insider to say Russia is "ready for a ceasefire". He said the US now "understands" Russia's position on Ukraine. (COMMENT: This is more scene-setting by the Kremlin for a peace deal in Ukraine. Later on Thursday, Trump said that Putin has made major concessions already by dropping its claim over all of Ukraine and that Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky was blocking a peace deal. The Kremlin has played Trump extremely well. His soundbites sound like they may have been written by a Russian scriptwriter.)
BABIES' MILITARY STYLE: A maternity hospital in Russia's Keremovo region in Siberia has been dressing newborn babies in Soviet military caps. (COMMENT: Russian society is increasingly being moulded into a militarised society. Seeing young babies wearing Red Army caps is chilling.)
GENERAL SENT TO PRISON: A court in Russia stripped Major-General Ivan Popov of his rank, fined him and sent him to prison for five years for alleged fraud. Supporters of the popular former frontline commander say that he is being punished for criticising Russia's Ministry of Defence in 2023. (NOTE: Interestingly, reports earlier this month suggested that Popov was being sent back to Ukraine instead of being thrown in prison to command a frontline unit of ex-convicts. It now appears that he may have turned down this "poisoned chalice" and opted for prison.)