Russia’s resilient GDP, virus cases grabbing headlines

The breakdown of Russian Q2 GDP released this week showed that the economy's sectoral structure helped to cushion the fall in output from the pandemic. More recently, there have been encouraging signs that activity as a whole is rebounding quickly. Despite this, the central bank looks set to cut interest rates further when it meets next week. On the coronavirus front, the recent rise in cases in Russia is not a major threat to the recovery, but the increase in the Czech Republic is a bigger concern and presents a downside risk to our relatively upbeat forecast.