By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
No president in his right mind goes willingly into elections facing inflation, war casualties, recession, and hope for investment from his rivals and enemies – simultaneously.
I’m not talking about Donald Trump on November 3, the Congressional election day. This is about Vladimir Putin on September 20, the State Duma election day.
The risk to Putin is that, if ballot manipulation and fraud aren’t counted, the voter mandate for the Communist Party (KPRF) will be greater than for United Russia, the ruling party, by a ratio of about 35% to 30%; and that the number of Duma deputies representing the opposition parties altogether will reach a majority of the 450 seats. This would put United Russia in a minority for the first time, and Putin as weak as he was in 2000, when the Communist Party (KPRF) held 113 seats.
In the latest VTsIOM poll, for example, United Russia has dwindled to 30.6%, while the New People Party has reached 11% and continues to climb. VTsIOM always undercounts the Communist Party voters; they don’t confide in pollsters. On the other hand, in VTsIOM’s latest poll of trust in the top-five national politicians, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov ranked fourth with 30%, trailing ex-President Dmitry Medvedev (37%), Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (57%), and President Putin (77%).
Russian vote fraud is not so much if as how big – most experts estimate between 5% and 10% of the 114 million votes registered to be eligible. Ballot rigging of that magnitude has been well understood by Russian voters since Boris Yeltsin took power in 1991; it is expected still.
The warning signs in the public approval polls have been flashing since last September as the percentages have begun to grow out of the margin of statistical error. From last September to February, approval for the President has dropped from 87% to 82%; approval for Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is down from 75% to 68%; approval of the Government, down from 74% to 67%; approval of region governors, down from 73% to 69%; approval of the State Duma, down from 62% to 58%.
In the election-winning, election-losing formula of Votes + Money + Bullets, these numbers are an urgent challenge for the Kremlin to recover the votes.
The accounting for bullets is this. On the Ukraine war front, direct sources report seeing concentrations for a “major offensive” of Russian infantry and tanks, with heavy artillery and air support, “on the Konstantinoka, Slavyansk, and Kramatorsk directions.” Another military source says this is the Russian response to last month’s Ukrainian counter-offensive in which territory was lost. “Russian forces are now attempting to take the [lost territory] back. I don’t see anything, however, that represents a major armoured thrust. There will be shaping attacks and the same kind of small-unit exploitation, then consolidation, we’ve seen before. I believe that if, or when, a major offensive comes, it will be a drive on Zaporozhye city and a move north to cut off, or threaten to cut off, the remaining Ukrainian formations in the Donbass.”
Success for the Russian operational strategy in all sectors of the front is dependent on methodically slow artillery, air, missile, and drone preparation; limitation of casualty risk by dispersion of men; concentration of numerical superiority by rapid manoeuvre plus deception. Since last September, the decline in the weekly Russian casualty rates — as measured by anti-Russian sources — has been a sharp one. Corroboration can be inferred from the daily Moscow briefings by the Ministry of Defense which are reporting a 10% to 15% drop in estimated Ukrainian casualties compared to December and January; this is a sign of fewer direct engagements.
In parallel with what sources believe to be Putin’s tight rein on ground operations at the front, the General Staff is expanding its missile and drone attacks deep into western Ukraine, aiming at the energy infrastructure between Kiev and Lvov; the railway links from Poland; and command bunkers for Ukrainian and NATO officers. To most Russian military observers this is attrition strategy unchanged, not a shift to a knock-out offensive. No source expects a victory parade by the autumn elections.
The election risk to Putin, therefore, is primarily economic. At his March 23 session with domestic policymakers, this is how he called it: “What stands out most is the weak, negative trend in key macroeconomic indicators.” Putin meant the 2.1% recession in the GDP measure in January. He didn’t say what the officials around the table understand but don’t say in public: this is the start of the two-year recession Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has projected to run from minus 2.5% of GDP to minus 3.5%.
Calling it the unlikely “risk scenario”, Nabiullina claimed last October that “the scenario assumes a significant deterioration of the external environment. Another sharp rise in [US] tariffs in 2026 is expected to cause hard landing of major economies, in particular a recession in the USA and the euro area. Negative changes in the capital market induced by the crisis in the real economy and imbalances accumulated in advanced economies’ financial markets will entail a global financial crisis.”
Putin remains reluctant to admit as much. On Monday of this week he claimed: “a key condition for steady growth is the overall balance of the macroeconomic framework, along with continuous monitoring and management of such critical parameters as money supply growth, lending dynamics and, of course, the state of the budget system, where ensuring longterm sustainability is essential…Effective macroeconomic policy must, of course, take into account all significant factors and respond in advance to external risks.”
This is to state the obvious, not what he proposes to do.
Neither Putin’s discussion with his advisors, who included Nabiullina, nor the decisions they agreed on, are revealed in the Kremlin record. Click for this record since mid-February. The next day at his annual conference with the business lobby, Putin offered to cut state spending if the oligarchs did not increase their dividends. “As the prices of our traditional exports rise amid turbulent markets, one might be tempted to take advantage of the situation and to pursue opportunistic profits, channel them into dividends, or, in the case of the state, inflate budget expenditures and government spending. I spoke about this publicly before, but I want to reiterate it here: we must remain reasonable and prudent.”
By press release after the Kremlin meeting with the President, Nabiullina tried public reassurance. “A wide range of goods, prices for which depend more on demand rather than on one-off factors, were becoming expensive at a slower rate,” she announced on March 23; then: “In February, prices in 80 out of 85 Russian regions rose less notably than in January. Prices for fruit and vegetables grew more slowly. Butter and fats continued to decrease in price, with milk and dairy products, cheese, tea and coffee, pasta and cereals becoming cheaper. Non-food prices rose moderately on average.”
She followed on March 25: “In March 2026, estimated inflation expected by households in one year equalled 13.4% vs 13.1% in February 2026…The indicator edged up mainly due to the estimates of respondents with savings. The consumer sentiment index barely changed. Companies’ price expectations also remained virtually the same.”
Nabiullina was intimating that most Russians ignore what she says. Instead, they expect that inflation for them will be three times higher than she and Putin are attempting to jawbone.
The regular Levada polls confirm that the majority of Russians don’t trust Russian bankers; they have even less confidence in the oligarch-owned Russian businesses. When they are polled for the names of leading figures they trust the most, Nabiullina doesn’t rate. She is less recognized, less trusted than Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, at 2%; and Communist Party leader Zyuganov, also at 2%.
Left to right: Elvira Nabiullina; Dmitry Peskov; Gennady Zyuganov.
By press release Nabiullina is dissembling. On March 25 she announced that “the rise in outstanding household mortgages decelerated (+0.2% in February vs +0.9% in January), largely due to a considerable decrease in new loans issued under the Family Mortgage programme following the adjustment of its terms from 1 February 2026. “ The reality was that the Kremlin had decided to cut the budget subsidy to assist borrowers buying their family home; the cutoff date was January 31. In anticipation, there was a surge of mortgage borrowing between December and February. In February also, according to a report by the state Sberbank, there was a shift in demand to buy and to borrow from newbuilds to pre-owned or resale properties, including dachas. “The share of new constructions in the market has significantly decreased, to 54% (-20.0 pp), due to the accelerated demand for Family Mortgages in early 2026…Borrowers took out three times more loans to buy countryside homes compared to February 2025, when they took out RUB 18.9 bn to buy pre-owned suburban homes and RUB 11.5 bn in construction loans.”
This real estate is the preferred Russian voter’s method for conserving the value of his savings, if he has them, after placing cash on high-interest term deposits in Sberbank. The surge in buying and borrowing for real estate has reflected fear of worsening prospects for prices, jobs, government spending, and disposable income for the rest of this year.
The short-term mortgage data reveal long-term worry on the part of individuals. Their reaction is lagging in time. It has already been anticipated by the real estate developers and the construction industry.
This Moscow business newspaper report appeared last October. This week, the headline in Kommersant was “Builders hit the wall.” The new report is a dramatic disclosure of how rapidly, widely, and deeply the recession is taking hold.
Source: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8533971
Kommersant describes new data released by Soyuzcement, the Cement Producers Union of Russia. / In the first two months of this year, output of cement across the country has fallen by more than 28% compared to the same period of 2025, and the rate of decline is speeding up. Demand for cement from the construction industry is now projected to drop by 25% over the year. This is being triggered by the collapse of new housing starts.
“Due to the poor start to 2026, analysts are lowering forecasts for cement consumption in Russia. Demand for it may decrease by 24.6% this year and become the lowest in more than fifteen years. In addition to the collapse in consumption, growing imports are putting pressure on producers.
“Cement consumption in Russia in 2026, while maintaining the current trend, may decrease by 15 million tonnes, CM PRO [construction materials consultancy in Moscow] predicts. In this case, the decrease for the year will amount to 24.6%, up to 46 million tonnes in lost volume. If the forecast is realized, the consumption will be the lowest since 2010, according to Soyuzcement data. This drop, according to Vladimir Guz, managing partner of CM PRO, is comparable to the closure of seven enterprises with a capacity of about 2 million tonnes per year, each. He does not rule out that the consumption forecast at the beginning of the second quarter will be revised downward.
“Current expectations are worse than the initial ones. Earlier, Soyuzcement estimated that cement consumption in Russia would decrease by 15% to 20% this year. CM PRO talked about 20%. ‘We assumed that the recession would not be as dramatic as it turned out to be in the first quarter,’ says Mr. Guz. He expected an accelerating decline by the middle of the year, which would peak in the third quarter. But the reality has turned out to be worse. The volume of cement consumption in Russia, according to Soyuzcement, has already decreased by 25.7% year-on-year to 4.5 million tonnes in January-February 2026. CM PRO also recorded a drop of almost 26%.
“In February, the decrease was 29.4%, to 2.4 million tonnes. Guz talks about a 28.4% year-on-year reduction in output following the results of the first two months. Soyuzcement and the National Association of Building Materials Manufacturers, in their resolution on the results of the Siberian Construction Week 2026, note that in January many cement manufacturers reduced production by 20% or more. Many factories did not produce products.
“The main reason for the collapse is a decrease in construction volumes. According to the information system Наш.Дом.РФ, housing starts in Russia in January 2026 decreased by 27% year-on-year, to 8.04 million square meters. The trend is unlikely to change significantly in the near future: after a period of rising demand in February, sales of new buildings in the primary markets of the key cities of the country fell by 17.9% year-on-year. Businesses are unable to compensate for the downturn through infrastructure construction.”
For these losses in construction starts and cement tonnages, read losses of votes for Putin and United Russia in September.
Footnote: Nothing reported so far gives credibility to the promise of a massive US investment stimulus for the Russian economy advertised in daily tweets as the Trump-Witkoff-Kushner peace dividend negotiated by Kirill Dmitriev. Despite his self-promotion in the Russian and western media, Dmitriev remains as unrecognizable and as untrustworthy to Russian voters as Nabiullina. In an anti-Putin editorial in the New York Times this week, Dmitriev was reported as “as an insubstantial figure with no real mandate… on the verge of dismissal.” For Putin Peskov has defended Dmitriev and his mandate by calling this comment “an absolutely false fabrication that does not correspond to reality.”
Source: https://x.com/kadmitriev
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