Russia

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, in a meeting chaired by Vladimir Putin, banned all Russian diesel exports from 8 to 31 July, the first time the restriction has bound producers as well as traders, after June seaborne diesel exports had already fallen 39% month on month. Urals crude averaged $63.18 a barrel in June, down 26% on May, even as product revenue rose 14% on pricier global fuel.

By 23 July Moscow's oil trade sat in a tighter corner still: the US crude waiver had lapsed for 26 days with no successor, the longest gap of the war, while the EU's newly agreed sanctions package froze the $44 price cap for 12 months instead of letting a scheduled rise through. Russia is selling into a thinner, costlier, more legally exposed market rather than one closed to it.

Russia recorded its first monthly budget surplus of 2026 in June, 0.28tn roubles, reported 9 July, even as the half-year deficit reached 5.73tn roubles, 2.35tn worse than a year earlier, with spending running 16.1% above 2025. The Moscow Exchange index has fallen for 17 straight weeks, and National Wealth Fund liquid assets stood at only about $46.4bn on 1 July, the reserve Moscow leans on to smooth wartime shortfalls.

The strain reached the Kremlin's own language on 28 June, when Vladimir Putin admitted, in his own voice rather than through a deputy, that petrol queues are real and fuel is not always available, after Ukrainian strikes forced rationing across 15 regions. Officials are also weighing a fresh mobilisation wave for after the autumn Duma elections, with contract signings down to about 800 a day, half last year's rate.

Russia lost roughly 53 soldiers a day against Ukraine's three around 23 June, about 17 times Ukraine's rate, for ground the Institute for the Study of War says neither side can decisively hold. Kostyantynivka in Donetsk anchors the front's near-static line, where casualties are buying little visible territory in return.

On 18 July, general staff chief Valery Gerasimov claimed fresh captures across five Donetsk settlements; the Institute for the Study of War found no evidence Russian troops had entered any of them, and Russian war bloggers reported no entry either. It follows Russia's own defence ministry circulating AI-generated footage in mid-June that falsely showed a FAR larger capture after sending only 100 to 250 fighters into Kostyantynivka. The fabrications point to a war effort substituting propaganda for the territorial gains its casualty rate can no longer buy.