Russia Has Started Hiding Key Economic Data

After Putin's demand to "prevent a recession."

Russian authorities continue to put a "secret" veneer on key government statistics, from demographics and crime rates to basic economic indicators.

After President Vladimir Putin demanded that the country should under no circumstances avoid an economic downturn, Rosstat cut information about the economy in its publications, removing key macro indicators for June and the first half of the year, analysts at PSB pointed out.

In particular, Rosstat did not provide data on the dynamics of retail trade turnover in real terms - that is, adjusted for inflation. It published only the nominal figure - it increased by 12.2% year-on-year in June. Taking into account inflation, the real growth of retail turnover could be 2-3%, the BCOP estimates.

The figures on the real turnover of wholesale trade were also hidden. In nominal terms, its growth has practically stopped - 0.4% year-on-year in June. This means that, taking into account inflation, wholesale sales in the country could collapse by almost 10%. The decline in the sector is not the first month: in May it amounted to 7.6% year-on-year, remind the BCOP.

The figures on real GDP growth for June were not published either - they are presented by the Ministry of Economic Development. This was probably due to the absence of part of the Rosstat data, the BCOP suggests.

After the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities classified all customs statistics, data on the composition of the Central Bank's foreign exchange reserves and allowed large companies not to disclose top managers and financial indicators in reports. In 2023, data on Russia's oil and gas production were classified, and in 2024, after a series of Ukrainian drone raids, Rosstat stopped publishing statistics on gasoline and diesel fuel production.

In 2022, amid losses in Ukraine, Rosstat closed statistics on mortality by age and region, and in 2024 - all data on causes of death, which allowed indirectly assessing the army's losses at the front.

In 2025, amid the collapse of birth rates to the lowest levels in the country's history, detailed data on the number of births and deaths, monthly data on the number of marriages and divorces were no longer published, and all demographic statistics by region completely disappeared (previously, figures were published separately for each subject).

After that, figures on the total population of Russia fell under the unspoken "secret" category. And the Interior Ministry classified data on the number of people killed by crime - after criminals sent to war began returning from the front en masse and the number of serious crimes in the country set a 15-year record.

The disappearance of economic data from Rosstat's publications came a month after Putin, speaking at SPIEF-2025, demanded to avoid recession in the country by any means. "Some specialists, experts point to the risks of stagnation and even recession. This should certainly not be allowed under any circumstances," Putin said.

PSB Analytics

Rosstat has published a truncated pool of macroeconomic statistics for June and the first half of the year. That's probably why the Russian Ministry of Economic Development did not provide an estimate of real GDP growth for this period...

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