The Bell's monthly briefing — November
Hello! This is your Monthly Briefing from The Bell — the month’s most important developments, captured in charts, analysis, and recommended reading.
🔔 Today, December 10, The Bell will host a live webinar exclusively for our paid subscribers: Russia’s economy hit the brakes — is a full stop coming?
The webinar will be hosted by our expert authors, Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, and our editor, Peter Mironenko. It will start at 14:30 CET / 8:30 AM EDT.
What a difference a year makes. The Russian economy lurched from spectacular growth to near-stagnation, from consumer spending sprees to belt-tightening. The contradictions that officials papered over for months finally caught up with them—and the true costs of the war are now impossible to ignore.
Join the authors of our weekly newsletter, Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko for an hour-long dissection of Russia’s economic unraveling. We’ll break down how we got here, what the data really shows, and where things go from here. And if there’s a peace deal on the horizon? We’ll game out what that might mean for Russia’s battered economy.
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1. The Month at a Glance
This year has taught us what it means to live in a world where international politics is shaped by the unpredictable moves of Donald Trump: everything can change overnight. But even by these new standards, the White House has set a record over the last month.
November began with the fallout from Trump’s first sanctions against Russian oil majors. The U.S. Treasury publicly attacked a potential buyer of the sanctioned Lukoil’s international assets — oil trader Gunvor, co-founded by Vladimir Putin’s longtime associate Gennady Timchenko. “As long as Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin’s puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operate and profit,” the Treasury Department declared on X, blocking the deal and forcing more than a dozen countries where Lukoil controls key energy assets to prepare for possible nationalization.
But the political winds shifted quickly. By mid-November, pressure on Russia gave way to pressure on Ukraine, triggering international uproar over Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” which turned out to be favorable to Moscow. No need for conspiracy theories: it looks like the White House simply wants a ceasefire as soon as possible — and the fastest path is to push Ukraine toward concessions since Vladimir Putin has no intention of giving up.
Putin understands this and has been repeating his demands almost daily since mid-November: he wants full control over the Donbas. Only then can he declare victory at home and begin a slow campaign to get sanctions lifted and return Russia to the global stage. The key question now is whether Volodymyr Zelensky — weakened by a corruption scandal and the resignation of his closest ally, Andriy Yermak — will agree to terms favorable to Russia.
Putin will be hoping Washington can pressure Kyiv into an agreement, not least because Russia’s economy is steadily worsening under the strain of almost four years of war. In November, the biggest story was the growing problems companies face servicing debt. With the central bank’s key rate stuck in double digits for the third consecutive year, everyone is struggling — the federal budget, state-owned and private companies, and ordinary Russians. Economic growth is slowing noticeably, and 2026 is likely to bring stagnation. Paying off those debts will only get harder.
2. November Visualized
Russia’s economy continues to cool. In Q3, GDP growth dipped to 0.6% and in Q4 could drop into negative territory. Even defense manufacturing failed to grow, probably because it is at the limit of its physical capacity. In 2026, the economy could move into long-term stagnation.
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By world standards, Russia’s state borrowing is genuinely low. It stands at 38.6 trillion rubles ($475 billion), just 17.7% of GDP, this year and is set to rise to 43.7 trillion rubles ($537 billion), 18.6% of GDP, next year. By comparison, the average debt-to-GDP ratio in the Eurozone is 81.8%.
But servicing this ruble debt while the central bank has double-digit interest rates isn’t cheap, and gets more expensive every year. By 2025, Russia was spending nearly the same share of its budget on debt service as the UK — even though Russia’s overall debt load was far smaller, at 17.67% of GDP versus more than 100% in the UK.
In 2025, the cost of servicing state debt should be 3.18 trillion rubles ($39 billion, or 1.46% of GDP), rising to 3.9 trillion ($48 billion, or 1.7% GDP) next year. That’s more than combined state spending on health and education and double the level of debt servicing before the war. In 2019-2020, Russia spent about 0.7% of its GDP on interest payments, up to 0.8% in 2021.
Against an economic slowdown and high interest rates, more and more companies are finding it harder to service their debts, too. This week, the Central Bank addressed the problems facing companies. By its estimate, published in the latest “Financial Stability Review”, more than two-thirds of the debt held by Russia’s biggest companies is owed by firms finding it difficult or impossible to make repayments.
The share of problem consumer loand rose fast over the second and third quarters, too. By the start of October, the proportion of non-performing loans made up 12.9% of all outstanding unsecured consumer debt. That is the highest it’s been since the central bank began publishing comparable data six years ago, and up significantly from 7.9% a year earlier.
3. Editors’ Picks
1. How Russia exploits Western banks to repress Kremlin critics
2. Russians voice frustration over EU visa tightening
3. Russia wages war with borrowed cash
4. Russia’s economic slowdown bites harder
5. Wartime debts drag Russian businesses down
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Written by Peter Mironenko