Russia is potentially facing the prospect of catastrophic hyperinflation, as the wartime economy threatens to overheat.

Hard pressed Russian consumers have seen prices for basic food items explode over the course of last year, leaving them increasingly out of pocket.

Potato prices rose by almost 95% between November 2023 and 2024, while butter shot up by 36.5%.

Officially, inflation is running at a worrying 9.5%, forcing Russia’s Central Bank to hike interest rates to a record high of 21%.

However, unofficially, there are claims that the real rate is closer to an eye-watering 40%, leaving some to worry that the dark spectre of hyperinflation is back.

According to the Telegram Channel General SVR, Kremlin economic experts believe that inflation will reach three digits this year.

“So, yesterday it became known that by the end of 2024, real inflation in Russia was 39.9%,” they wrote.

“The Politburo was ready for such a figure and did not reflect much on this matter.

“The discussion about the prospects for inflation in Russia this year unfolded much more cheerfully and excitingly.

“Almost all the experts who advise members of the Politburo agree that this year inflation will be three-digit.”

Russia last suffered from hyperinflation at the beginning of the 1990s, following the introduction of market reforms in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At one stage, the annual inflation rate was a whopping 240%, causing severe hardships for ordinary Russians.

General SVR emerged in 2020, claiming to be run by former and current members of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as other state bodies.

In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson declined to identify the channel’s sources, citing personal security, but said they had “complete confidence” in them.

The channel once famously claimed that Vladimir Putin fell down some steps, soiling himself in the process – something that was strenuously denied by the Kremlin.