Day: October 3, 2025

• Russia’s economy is slowing, raising concerns about funding defense and social spending.
• Western sanctions and soaring military outlays are straining its growth and stability.
• Moscow is planning tax hikes to help bankroll the Ukraine war effort.

Russia’s economy has slowed to a pace that could jeopardize its ability to cover surging defense, security, and social costs, warned a top business leader.

“It seems to me that indeed, this cooling or ‘managed soft landing’ is not very soft and not very managed,” Alexander Shokhin, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told Rossiya 24 TV channel on Tuesday.

Shokhin said that at the start of the year, officials assumed Russia needed at least 2% annual growth to cover defense, security, social spending, and investment. But growth is now expected to fall well short of that target.

He said Russia would be “lucky” to see GDP growth of just over 1% by the end of 2025 and 1.3% in 2026. Russia’s central bank has forecasted 1.0% to 2.0% GDP growth for 2025 — sharply lower than Russia’s 4.3% GDP growth in 2024.

Meanwhile, analysts polled by Interfax news agency expect Russian economic growth to come in at 1.1% this year — down from their August forecast of 1.4%.

“This is low, undoubtedly. Therefore, it is very important that this period of cooling or managed contraction, or ‘managed soft landing,’ does not drag on, because a rebound is already needed,” Shokhin said.

Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered sweeping Western sanctions, Russia has kept its economy afloat through massive defense spending and revenue from oil and gas exports.

That spending has kept factories busy and supported output — but at a cost.

Russia’s economy has become so militarized that its top central banker warned at the end of 2023 that it risked overheating. To cool demand, the central bank sharply raised interest rates, a move that curbed inflation but further slowed growth.

Shokhin argued that Russia needs a stronger, sustainable baseline growth rate to remain stable.

“2% to 2.5% is that optimal economic growth rate for a non-overheated economy that indeed makes it possible to solve a wide range of tasks,” Shokhin said.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was looking to hike taxes on the rich to bankroll the war in Ukraine that started in February 2022.

“Tax increases confirm that the Kremlin is preparing for long-term military financing, for which consumers are beginning to pay, and on which the military-industrial complex continues to flourish,” wrote Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, in a Monday report.

The second track on Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl is named after Elizabeth Taylor.

It’s no surprise that one of the most glamorous pop stars would reference one of Hollywood’s most glamorous actors. And it’s not the first time she has referenced the movie star either. Entertainment Weekly points out that her hit “Ready for It?” has a lyric “Burton to this Taylor,” which refers to one of the movie star’s great loves, Richard Burton.

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Swift invokes Taylor again in “Elizabeth Taylor,” which appears to be dedicated to her fiancé Travis Kelce, as she sings, “Do you think it’s forever?”

“That view of Portofino was on my mind when you called me at the Plaza Athénée,” Swift sings. Portofino held a special place in Taylor’s heart—Burton first proposed to her there.

Taylor lives throughout the song. Swift sings that if her love story should end, “I’d cry my eyes violet,” which is how the actress’s eyes were famously described. Later, Swift cements her love with a reference to Taylor’s perfume, White Diamonds.

“All my white diamonds and lovers are forever,” Swift sings. “Don’t you ever end up anything but mine.”

Elizabeth Taylor, who began her career as a child star, won a 1961 Academy Award for best actress in a leading role for Butterfield 8 and one in 1967 for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

“She usually played a woman of common sense and uncommon passion,” TIME’s former film critic Richard Corliss wrote in her 2011 obituary. “In each role, she found the starting point for a creative journey at the crossroads of modern femininity, or proto-feminism, and ageless star quality.”

She appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in 1949, back when she was MGM studio’s biggest star. In the profile, she revealed that she wanted a break from playing glamorous characters: “When Elizabeth talks about her future in the movies, her eyes flash sapphire sparks. ‘What I’d really like to play,’ she gasps excitedly, ‘is a monster — a hellion.’”

Off-screen, she had a tumultuous personal life with eight weddings and seven divorces. As a philanthropist, she helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research and raised about $100 million for patients with other illnesses. Throughout it all, she maintained her allure. As Corliss wrote in her obituary, “She remained a tireless champion through many illnesses: skin cancer, a (benign) brain tumor, injuries to her hips and back. ‘I get around now in a wheelchair,’ she said in 2005, ‘but I get around.’ The grand lady was also a game gal.”