russia Has Classified Key Economic Data and Is Concealing the Real Level of Poverty

russia continues to systemically restrict access to official statistics, which indicates a deliberate concealment of the real state of the economy against the background of a full-scale war against Ukraine. At the end of 2025, 168 tables were removed or reduced from statistical compilations, and 115 indicators were no longer updated on the Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistical System (EMISS). This concerns key data – household income and expenditure, doctors’ and teachers’ salaries, the number of civil servants, social benefits, and demographic indicators.

Particularly telling is the effective cessation of publication of the results of the “selective survey of household budgets”. It is these data that made it possible to assess how much russians actually spend on food, utilities, medicine, and basic needs.

Statistics on the number and salaries of state and municipal employees has been completely closed. Data on the salaries of doctors, nurses, teachers, lecturers, scientists, and cultural workers are not being updated. Instead of new data, there are now notes saying “temporarily closed” – a phrase that’s being used more and more to hide inconvenient info. With military spending on the rise, this looks like an attempt to hide stagnation and falling incomes in the civilian sector.

Data on the number of combatants, funeral payments, juvenile crime rates, and the number of convicts have also disappeared from public access.

A significant portion of not updated indicators also relate to foreign trade – exports and imports. For a country under unprecedented sanctions and dependent on a war economy, this is critically important information. Concealing it indicates an unwillingness to reveal the depth of structural problems, falling investment, and limited markets.

Taken together, these steps form a clear trend: russia is deliberately reducing transparency in order to control the information space and minimize the society’s reaction to economic deterioration.