Slumping global coal prices and sanctions have put Russia’s coal industry on the brink of collapse, forcing the government to intervene as it scrambles to protect both a key energy source and a major employer.

Russia is set to spend 6.3% of its GDP on defense this year — a post-Cold War high.

The Bank of Russia has room for a deeper cut to its key interest rate amid slowing inflation and growing pressure from officials and businesses to save the economy from sliding into recession.

Falling inflation has persuaded the central bank in Moscow to continue relaxing the country’s record borrowing costs.

Friday marked the second-straight time the Bank of Russia cut its interest rate after it lowered borrowing costs in early June.

Russia’s central bank slashed its key interest rate to the lowest level in nearly a year amid slowing inflation and growing worries the cooling economy could tip into recession.

Vikram Doraiswami, the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, rejected the West's criticism of India's oil imports from Russia.

Russia said on Tuesday that it wanted peace in Ukraine, hours after mounting attacks that killed at least 25 people, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman and more than a dozen prison inmates. - Hospital targeted - "Three people were killed in the attack,

A problem with lengthy sanctions regimes is that as trade diminishes, they tend to become less effective. As economist Albert Hirschman argued in his seminal work on trade and power, trade is both a means of acquiring power as well as a source of power that can be wielded coercively.