Business in russia Under Pressure: Bankruptcies, Debts, and Strikes

russian small and medium-sized businesses entered 2026 in a state of deep crisis. According to surveys, 95% of entrepreneurs report worsening of the situation, three-quarters report significant difficulties. A decline in revenue since the start of the year was reported by 68.7% of respondents, while 5.5% have already ceased operations.

Demand has fallen most sharply in the beauty industry, dentistry, and auto maintenance and repair. Profitability has declined the most in auto repair, healthcare,  pharmaceuticals, and the hotel industry. In parallel, informal employment is on the rise in these same sectors. Prices have already been raised by 82.7% of entrepreneurs, more than half of whom have increased their rates by up to 20%. Experts predict that up to a third of small and medium-sized businesses will close in the near future.

Wage arrears reached 1.86 billion rubles in January 2026 alone, with 40.7% of this amount having accumulated specifically in January. The construction industry leads in non-payments –42% of cases, followed by raw material processing (31.1%) and mineral extraction (11%).

The most high-profile case is the collapse of “novolex” – siberia’s largest construction holding company – which owes its employees approximately 2.5 billion rubles. alfa-bank is demanding 1 billion rubles from the holding company, nine bankruptcy petitions have been filed with arbitration courts, and some of the heavy equipment has already been seized. Net profit for most of the holding’s subsidiaries fell by 70–90%, while “novolex trading house” ended the year with a loss of 148 million rubles.

The situation in the mining north is also critical. Employees of “severPutStroy” and “severKomplektStroy” in vorkuta are preparing for strikes – salaries were last paid in full back in December 2025, while February payments have not been received at all. One strike has already taken place. Employees of the municipal “specialized road administration” won a court ruling raising their salaries from 8,000 to 30,000–57,000 rubles, but they never received the money – most of them were simply fired.

Payment issues are affecting other regions as well: bus drivers in tyva, kamchatka, and omsk region are not receiving their salaries, while road workers in smolensk have been unsuccessfully demanding higher wages and decent working conditions since last year.