13 August 2026
Russian authorities have concealed from public access information about the ruble reserves in the single treasury account, which housed the “free balances” of the budget that the Ministry of Finance used as a reserve for a rainy day.
The Federal Treasury has removed the “operating day” section from its website , where it previously published daily statistics on the placement of ruble reserves in banks and the money market. Data on the total amount of available cash held by budgets at all levels has also disappeared.
On August 10, Sergei Aleksashenko, former Deputy Minister of Finance and Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank, drew attention to this . “The Treasury hid this information,” he wrote.
This is essentially the Finance Ministry’s “stash”: rubles the state received, including from taxpayers, but didn’t spend, instead holding them in the banking system or investing them in repo and swap transactions, earning interest.
It’s this money the government is currently using to cover the budget deficit, notes economist Kirill Rodionov. Previously, the Finance Ministry relied on government loans, but in July it suspended government bond issuance after their prices collapsed and major banks virtually ceased buying, citing a lack of available liquidity and a massive outflow of cash.
Since the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Finance has withdrawn 3.5 trillion rubles from its ruble reserves, according to Aleksashenko’s calculations. This covered approximately half of the budget deficit, which reached 6.5 trillion rubles by the end of July. However, as a result, the Treasury’s available cash has almost halved—from 8 trillion to 4.5 trillion rubles, according to Aleksashenko’s estimates.
The budget has virtually no other reserves left. Since the start of the war, two-thirds of the National Welfare Fund’s liquid assets—that is, free, uninvested money—have been spent, accumulating for years using excess oil revenues. Of the 8.8 trillion rubles, only 3.5 trillion remained by mid-2026. This is “a pale shadow of the pre-war level,” notes Alexandra Prokopenko, a research fellow at the Carnegie Center for Russia and Eurasia. This year, the Ministry of Finance is trying to replenish the fund’s remaining funds with budget oil and gas revenues rather than spend them.
Meanwhile, the budget itself is “overflowing,” writes Aleksashenko: in the budget law, the Ministry of Finance projected a modest 2.6% increase in spending and even a slight reduction in military spending. But in fact, by the end of July, it had jumped 14.5% year-on-year. “If this ratio holds until the end of the year, final spending will exceed the planned level by 5 trillion rubles,” Aleksashenko estimates.
“Without tax increases—such as raising the base VAT rate from 20% to 22% in 2026 and the corporate income tax from 20% to 25% in 2025—the Ministry of Finance will struggle to maintain current spending levels,” Rodionov believes. Additional taxes are the main focus of the budget for the next three years, and if tax increases occur, they “will inevitably lead to an even more pronounced economic slowdown than we currently experience,” the expert warns.
After the war began, Russian authorities classified the Central Bank’s gold and foreign exchange reserves as “secret,” stopped publishing monthly budget expenditure reports by item, classified data on fuel production and government officials’ salaries, customs statistics, and almost all birth rate and demographic data, and allowed large companies to conceal financial indicators in their reports.
Russia is broke, but will do as everything is fine and is a paradise……………………..
Mafia land is not divulging its last reserves, which should say a lot about its last reserves.