Putin lets consumers feel the pain as slump deepens in Russia

Moscow

RUSSIAN households are bearing the brunt of the blowback from the crisis in Ukraine and a tailspin in oil prices, setting the stage for the biggest drop in consumption in more than two decades that will deepen the country's recession.

Crushed by a 44 per cent slump in the rouble in the past year as prices soar, retail sales are set for what Otkritie Capital predicts will be their biggest decline since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, when savings were wiped out and households endured food shortages and hyperinflation. That has unnerved consumers like Svetlana Korotkova, who is stockpiling cereals and canned goods to build up what she calls her "safety cushion" - a lesson she learned from perestroika-era deprivation in the 1980s.