* Annual inflation accelerates to 6.68% - economy ministry * Russia’s pre-election spending seen pushing inflation higher * Central bank to meet on rates on Sept. 10 (Adds economy ministry’s assessment of annual inflation, analyst comment) MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Russia has registered marginal weekly inflation that pushed annual inflation to a five-year high, keeping pressure on the central bank which sharply raised rates last month to combat stubbornly rising consumer prices. Inflation is on the radar of both the central bank and the market as Russia tries to rein in rising prices that eat into incomes already dented by the COVID-19 crisis and a weak rouble. Russia’s consumer price index rose 0.01% in the week to Aug. 23 after declining by the same extent the preceding week, the federal statistics service Rosstat said. In year-on-year terms, inflation accelerated to 6.68% as of Aug. 23, its highest reading since August 2016, up from around 6.5% a week earlier, the economy ministry data showed. Consumer inflation may tick higher in the near term after President Vladimir Putin last weekend, one month before a September parliamentary election, announced one-off social payments to pensioners and soldiers. “Looks like acceleration of inflation to 7% will be the price to pay for the pre-election populism,” Evgeny Suvorov, an economist at CentroCreditBank, said on his Telegram channel MMI. “The central bank has no choice but to raise rates again,” Suvorov said in the MMI channel that was previously run by Kirill Tremasov, now the head of the monetary policy department at the central bank. So far this year, the consumer price index has risen 4.58% compared with 2.95% in the same period of 2020, Rosstat said. VTB Capital said it decided to raise its year-end inflation forecast to 6.1% from 5.9% after Wednesday’s data. The central bank, which targets annual inflation of 4%, will hold its next rate-setting meeting on Sept. 10 where it can opt for hiking rates for the fifth time so far this year. Higher rates make bank deposits more attractive and lending more expensive, which should support the rouble and tame inflation but is negative for growth. (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; additional reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya and Darya Korsunskaya; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Nick Macfie) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.