Alcohol consumption among Russians has been steadily declining. November 2025 saw the eighth consecutive monthly decline, bringing the figures close to the minimum levels of 1997-1998.
Due to the risk of international sanctions, banks in Armenia, as well as Kazakhstan, began to block payments from Russian legal entities for the supply of foreign electronics. We are talking about products that are prohibited from being imported into the Russian Federation: servers, microcircuits, processors, telecom equipment.
The tightening of export controls by formally friendly countries may lead to a shortage of such products in Russia within six months, according to experts. Last year, Armenia, Georgia and other neighboring countries increased their imports of goods from the EU and the US by $9.7 billion, or 66%. Of this volume, half went through the channels of parallel imports to the Russian Federation. For example, shipments of integrated circuits from the US and the EU to Armenia jumped 16 times, while their exports from Armenia to Russia increased by 6,500 times.