Meduza

Russia’s federal budget deficit reached 5.8 trillion rubles, or 2.5% of GDP, over the first eight months of 2026, according to a preliminary estimate from the Finance Ministry, one and a half times more than in the same period last year. Authorities had projected a full-year deficit of just 3.8 trillion rubles, or 1.6% of GDP.

The Finnish energy company Fingrid has told Russian telecom operators it will stop maintaining the power line poles that carry fiber-optic communication lines starting in 2027, sources told the Russian business daily Kommersant.

U.S. Treasury Department sanctions caused a global outage of the t.me domain on July 14, writes the author of the Telegram channel teleLakel, who obtained an official comment from Identity Digital, the company that operates the .me top-level domain.