AI-enabled state cyber operations and a record diesel-price shock headline today's outlook, even as NATO holds back from direct entry into Ukraine and Russia's technocrats fend off devaluation pressure. The through-line is escalating Russia-linked hybrid conflict — from SVR use of AI agents to influence operations and domestic information control — intersecting with sticky energy inflation and a tightening AI security-and-regulation agenda.

Another high-base-rate non-event forecast. Both a Nabiullina dismissal and a declared devaluation corridor are individually uncommon, and requiring neither over 180 days stacks the odds toward the null. Fact-check confirms the Bank of Russia is at 14% (recent 25bp cut) and signaling cautious, data-dependent policy — consistent with technocratic control, not capture by the security-industrial bloc. Putin's profile is decisive here: low tolerance for economic self-harm, and he has repeatedly arbitrated for CBR credibility because it underwrites fiscal war capacity; a move to 120/USD would spike import inflation and public discontent he avoids. The leaked memo is factional signaling, not adopted policy. The Skeptic (0.75, risk 76) accepted the logic but flagged weak design — I address that by anchoring on the twin-rarity base rate rather than the elite-conflict narrative. The political analyst has no track record weight, but the underlying claim is a Russia-macro call where I am well-calibrated (economics Brier 0.199), so I set 0.80.