Industrial sentiment in Russia recovers slightly in February after January's collapse

In February 2026, business confidence among Russian industrial enterprises showed a slight improvement after a sharp decline in January, when the industrial optimism index fell to its lowest level since the COVID. This is evidenced by data from a business survey conducted by the Institute for Economic Forecasting (INP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences as of late February.

According to Kommersant, a leading Russian business and financial news outlet, the INP's analysts, who calculate the index as the arithmetic mean of actual changes in demand, demand expectations, finished product inventory levels and production plans, note that the February adjustments were extremely insignificant and did not fundamentally change