FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Russia's central bank made a smaller than usual interest rate cut on Friday, a compromise move to support stagnating economic growth even as inflation fueled by war spending remains higher than the bank's target.
The quarter-point cut to 14% shows the bank slowing its pace of rate cuts from a peak of 21% last year. The bank had been cutting by at least a half-percentage point until a quarter-point cut on June 19.
The slowing pace of cuts appears to be a compromise between complaints from Russia's business lobby about high rates and the central bank's aim of reducing inflation to its target of 4% annually. High rates combat inflation but make life more expensive for businesses that want to borrow to invest or cover expenses.
On Wednesday, Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs business association, warned of a wave of “autumn bankruptcies” if the central bank maintained its rate level.
Russia’s economy held up better than many expected despite Western sanctions after Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine. The budget has been supported by continuing exports of oil, while military orders kept factories running.
Inflation however has been fed by increased government spending on the war and more recently by higher fuel prices, the result of Ukrainian drone attacks that have disabled refineries and led to shortages in some areas. Unemployment however remains low and the central bank said that some of the current inflationary pressure was due to temporary factors.
Recent price inflation “was largely provoked by the situation in the fuel market,” Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina said in a statement.
She said higher fuel prices were feeding into the prices of other goods, and into people's expectations for inflation because gasoline is a significant portion of regular household and business expenses. She added however that “as the situation in the fuel market stabilizes, inflation expectations are likely to go down.”
Annual inflation stood at 5.9% as of July 20 and is forecast to be 6%-7% next year, still above the bank's goal of 4%, while companies reported significantly lower expectations for demand and production.
Growth has slowed from over 4% per year in 2023-4 and 1% last year as the stimulus from increased federal spending on defense has worn off. The government has forecast 0.4% this year. In recent days the economy has faced further disruption from Ukrainian drone attacks on the warehouses of Wildberries, the country's biggest online retailer and an outlet for hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
FILE - Cars are parked in front of Russia's Central Bank building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Jan. 30, 2015. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
In this photo taken from a video provided by the Central Bank of Russia press service, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina holds a regular press conference following a board meeting in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Central Bank of Russia press service via AP)
In this photo taken from a video provided by the Central Bank of Russia press service, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina holds a regular press conference following a board meeting in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Central Bank of Russia press service via AP)
WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A teenager has pleaded guilty to all 55 counts, including murder, in a shooting nearly two years ago at Apalachee High School in Georgia that killed two students and two teachers.
Colt Gray, 16, entered the plea Friday without having reached a deal with prosecutors. He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting that also left several others wounded, at the high school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult with the 55 total counts, including murder in the four deaths and 25 counts of aggravated assault. His trial had been scheduled to start in mid-October.
A jury in March convicted his father, Colin Gray, on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and he is scheduled to be sentenced next week. Prosecutors said the elder Gray gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school.
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
Before accepting the plea, Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm asked Gray a series of questions meant to ensure that the teenager was aware of the consequences of his plea and was entering it voluntarily. To each question, Gray responded, “Yes, your honor.”
Because he pleaded guilty to murder, Gray faces a minimum sentence of life in prison. The judge must decide whether he should be eligible for parole after hearing victim statements, evidence and each side's summary of the case.
Gray sat at a table in the courtroom with his feet chained together next to his attorney. Members of the community, including some victims and family members, were present in the courtroom.
Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason was killed, told the judge she does not forgive Colt Gray. She said that while adults around him missed multiple warning signs, he was the one who decided to bring a gun to school and to pull the trigger.
“Those decisions were his and his alone,” she said.
She described her son as someone who "made people that were typically unseen feel seen, accepted and safe” and said she was confident he would have befriended Colt Gray if he'd had the chance.
“Mason deserved a future and we all deserved a future with Mason in it, and Colt took that from Mason and everyone who loved him," she said. She and two of Mason's sisters asked the judge for a sentence of life without parole.
Shayna Aspinwall, Richard Aspinwall's wife, told the judge the “grief of losing him is constant” and lamented that the lives of their daughters, who were 2 and 5 when their father died, will be “forever marked by his absence.”
“It is a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind,” she said. She asked the judge to sentence Colt Gray to life in prison without the possibility of parole, saying she didn't want herself and her daughters to have to endure multiple parole hearings.
A teenage student who was shot recalled that day, telling the judge she remembered feeling “really scared and confused because I saw Colt standing in the door with a gun.” The Associated Press is not identifying the girl, who is a minor.
She said she realized she had been shot and turned to a friend, asking him to hold her hand. She asked other friends to call her brother to let him know she'd been shot and didn't know if she'd make it. She had trouble staying awake and regained consciousness in a helicopter on the way to a hospital in Atlanta. She had multiple surgeries and wasn't able to walk for about a year.
“After the shooting I struggled with so much anxiety, and I felt like my life was over,” she said. She also asked the judge for a sentence of life without parole.
Apalachee High School Principal Jessica Rehberg said in court that Colt Gray’s “cruel actions” deserve “the harshest consequences.”
Gray's defense attorney wrote in a court filing that he plans to call a psychologist, a counselor at the juvenile detention center where he has been held and his grandmother to testify.
Investigators have previously testified that the teenager carried the rifle onto the school bus with the barrel wrapped in a poster board. They said he left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the rifle, shooting people in a classroom and hallway.
They have said Colt Gray carefully plotted the shooting at the high school of 1,900 students. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified at an earlier hearing that the teen left a notebook in his classroom with step-by-step instructions and a diagram to prepare for the assault, including an estimate that he could kill as many as 26 people and wound as many as 13 others.
Sheriff’s deputies interviewed Colt and Colin Gray in May 2023 about an online threat linked to the son. Colt Gray denied making the threat. He skipped eighth grade, enrolled as a freshman at Apalachee after the academic year had begun and then had a spotty attendance record.
Investigators found a shrine in Colt Gray's bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors said.
An investigator testified during Colin Gray's trial that he had been aware that his son's mental health had deteriorated and sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting, citing anger, anxiety and volatility. But the father never followed through on getting help for his son, the investigator said.
His mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin Gray, told investigators she had urged him weeks before the shooting to secure his guns and restrict their son’s access to them. Instead, over time, Colin Gray bought the boy ammunition, a gun sight and other shooting accessories, records show.
Judge Nicholas Primm holds a plea document for Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, left, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, stands next to his attorney Charlton Allen and pleads guilty at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, pleads guilty at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, is led in by deputies for a plea hearing at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
FILE - School shooting suspect Colt Gray exits the Barrow County Courthouse, Dec. 9, 2025, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, Pool, file)
