Presumably, one reason for the cash withdrawal boom is an attempt to exchange that money for something that retains its value on the black market—precious metals, USD, or EUR, etc.
After all, even in the Soviet Union, the ruble always had a quite “real” exchange rate for dollars.
Exactly. Physical dollars (or why not cash euros as well) are a safe store of value. Similarly, cash rubles are starting to be a viable option over a maximum 6-month timeframe, as withdrawing money from banks has been difficult for some time now due to the crisis hitting the banking system itself (read: non-performing loans, credit losses, and a systemic crisis). A significant devaluation of the ruble is, of course, likely over a slightly longer period (1–3 years), at which point permanent security can be found in cash dollars or euros.
Exactly, we are taking steps back toward the Soviet era; many familiar things from those times are resurfacing. When outlining future scenarios, it is useful to study the causes and sequence of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the role of the West and the entire global economy in all of this. Russian opposition economists and analysts know and remember these events well, not least because they have experienced these events personally.
The Swedes have woken up. Time to get the operation started.
HS wrote yesterday that South Korea and Japan (possibly also Taiwan) are also considering building their own nuclear weapons.
The near future of humanity looks concerning.
One of the Russian central bank’s most important goals has been to curb inflation. It has succeeded in this quite well, so what would be the point of shooting oneself in the foot by devaluing?
Hoarding piles of rubles under the mattress has likely been one of the surest ways to lose one’s wealth in Russia. During crises, the smartest people have usually exchanged rubles for other asset classes that maintain their value more stably. There have been no signs of anything like this lately.
Is there a credible source for these stories, or are you just relaying some YouTuber’s nonsense again?
Here is a source for the cash withdrawal; these could likely be found even better in other sources, but this will get you started.
Russia has a very skilled woman at the helm of the central bank, Elvira Nabiullina. But even with her abilities, inflation cannot be broken, even though she has done her best. More details on inflation can be found behind the link below, and indeed, it’s about YouTubers. In this case, the YouTubers are interviewer Michael Naki and expert Vladimir Milov. Inflation is discussed at around the seventeen-minute mark. English translation is available for this.
More about Vladimir Milov’s background in the Russian administration behind the link below.
In itself, anyone with common sense understands that as Russia’s oil revenues dry up, very major challenges lie ahead. The choice is being made between inflation and a liquidity crisis. If the policy of a strong ruble continues (the likely option), then inflation can be kept under control somehow (by non-Western standards), but the end result will be a liquidity crisis, because the oil sector cannot generate the necessary ruble income for the state budget, resulting in a liquidity crisis at the level of the entire national economy. If they devalue (which would probably be the more sensible option), the state budget can be moved toward balance, but there will certainly be immediate problems with inflation, unless price controls are introduced.
Then, regarding this cash withdrawal issue, there have been several reports and rumors about it throughout the autumn. Below, as reported by Meduza; the original Russian source is Ria Novosti. It can be translated with Google Translate.
As a bonus, statistics on how the Russian state budget is being funded through the repo market. The money-printing press is humming at an ever-accelerating pace, but what else can you expect as a war of this length continues into its fifth year. Nothing new under the sun; war is expensive. The second half of 2025 looks quite interesting. In 2026, the money-printing press will be running red-hot.
Yeah, right. The sources are mostly either Ukrainian or pro-Ukraine social media personalities. The Ria Novosti news about ATM withdrawal limits (or verification via phone call) doesn’t mean you can’t get your money out of the bank if you want to.
It’s worth reading views on Russia’s economy from parties that aren’t wearing blue-and-yellow glasses. Among others, the Bank of Finland does high-quality research:
Russia isn’t doing well, of course, but no immediate collapse is in sight. In light of the numbers, Russia is doing better than we are here at home. By picking out figures and statistics here and there, you could make a doomsday tweet thread even about the collapse of the Finnish economy.
The Kyiv Independent occasionally publishes interesting longer documentaries. The first one explains a bit about the positional warfare phase on the Dnipro River. The other video explores how Moscow began targeting Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I have read this report and view it with some skepticism. Not because BOFIT doesn’t know what they’re doing, but because researchers face several difficulties.
The worst of these is a lack of resources; while researchers often know their field, the perspective can easily remain narrow. This report discusses GDP and its growth quite extensively.
Attitude toward data. Researchers generally have to assume that the provided data is reliable and meaningful. This is often problematic, and even if the data itself isn’t wrong, GDP growth as a measure of economic health is often oversold. This doesn’t just apply to the Russian economy.
What is being measured? The projected GDP growth for 2026 doesn’t actually tell us much about the Russian economy. An economy doesn’t become healthier by manufacturing missiles and ammunition to be used in war. Or by producing inferior-quality cars that don’t last. Or by an increase in the production of funeral services.
The deflator used. When measuring GDP growth, it’s important to consider which deflators are used. There are currently many challenges in measuring Russian inflation, and for this metric alone, results vary depending on which inflation reporting one believes.
Problem statement: How relevant a metric is GDP for the health of the entire Russian economy? In my opinion, regarding the current crisis, it is not very relevant. It is more essential to examine internal economic dynamics, budget balance, and the liquidity crisis.
Finally, the worst part. “Our forecast assumption for the price of crude oil is based on the North Sea Brent quality futures prices in early October 2025. Based on futures prices, the price of crude oil is expected to be around 65 dollars per barrel in 2026–2027, which is clearly cheaper than in recent years.”
Italics mine. In this BOFIT review, it would have helped if different scenarios for oil prices had been created. However, this is not the researchers’ fault, but a problem of allocated resources. Research into the Russian economy has not been very high on the priority lists of forecasting institutions.
Let’s then bring up a source that is red, white, and blue. The only problem with Russian sources is that posting them here isn’t meaningful due to the language barrier and self-censorship. Russia actually has very high-quality economic journalism, and I recommend reading Kommersant, for example. However, it must be understood that journalists are constantly forced to engage in self-censorship, and this is not always realized in the West.
I have read Kommersant, but of course they do not cover topics that are unpleasant for the administration. So one cannot speak of quality journalism in the Western sense of the word. And the news you linked is even from Izvestija. In any case, as I understand it, it was about preventing various online banking and other scams, not directly about capital controls. I don’t understand how one can draw the conclusion from that that Russians are hoarding cash on a large scale or that the banking system is on the brink of collapse.
Russia is an authoritarian country that has mostly incurred debt in its own currency, so money can be printed indefinitely. This is possible because inflation is not alarmingly high and there are goods on the store shelves. If a sector of the economy is in trouble, it can be saved through political decisions.
I just don’t see how the Russian economy would collapse quickly without an external shock. Sanctions could have been such a shock if they had been strict enough from the start and had been complied with. However, the West lacked the courage or interest for that.
Oh boy, that was such juicy bait that I just have to take it. We are doing very poorly right now, but Russia is in a completely different league. Employment and GDP figures don’t look bad, but this isn’t surprising at all when the unemployed are directed to the front lines and, simultaneously, hundreds of billions in state savings from outside the economy are funneled directly into domestic consumption. Finland likely wouldn’t have unemployment or growth concerns in the short term either if Orpo put Varma’s and Ilmarinen’s money as an extension of the state budget 
Maintaining a high key interest rate of 16% would suggest that inflation in Russia is moving faster than the official figures indicate. Unfortunately, there are no independent bodies to assess this, and Rosstat has scrapped the system’s transparency specifically so that numbers can be modified more easily without it being obvious. Printing money is the last resort, because the inflation genie won’t go back into the bottle, and it is the fastest way to break the administration’s neck.
So far, flexibility has been sought by squeezing the private sector and nationalizing those companies, raiding the coffers of state-owned enterprises and shifting government debt onto their balance sheets, freezing all non-acute future and maintenance investments, and raising taxes. The significant role of state-owned enterprises, in particular, often goes unnoticed by us market economy people. A state can appear low on debt, as is typical in China and Russia, even though a massive hidden debt bomb might be ticking that cannot be allowed to explode, because state-owned enterprises employ a vast number of people.
A bigger crisis would require the economy’s flexibility to be so depleted that the system can no longer withstand a shock. As an outsider in such an opaque situation, one can only make educated guesses, but a low oil price forces the search for money—which previously appeared as if out of thin air—from elsewhere, which forces the Russian administration to make difficult choices.
Foreign loan markets are closed, only a limited amount can still be plundered domestically, inflation must not increase further so that citizens don’t get angry, liquid assets are starting to be depleted, and investments unrelated to the war are at a minimum. Based on these premises, I would consider the Russian economy entering a crisis to be a very likely scenario. Whether that is enough to topple Putin’s administration or if it only causes long-term damage to the economy remains to be seen.
In my opinion, Finland’s Ministry of Finance has a much easier job.
The following is of course imaginary, but it illustrates what would be the only understandable reason behind the current messes. There is a deeper message here than just a joke.
It is time for the West to wake up before it’s too late. The USA is slow to wake, but then it becomes as unpredictable as a bear startled from its slumber.
Trump: Hey there, Tsar!
Putin: Things are going badly in Ukraine. Come up with something so the West forgets about supporting them! Right now!
Trump: Of course. I’ll come up with something big and beautiful, the most magnificent thing ever.
Putin: Something to the south and especially the north. Slowly, so they don’t notice, but strong enough to have an impact. Nothing against a major state.
Trump: What are you going to do?
Putin: I don’t dare do much here. Might cut a couple of cables. You remember that tape I have.
Trump: I dare. And remember the deal!
Putin: We’ll start preparing strikes on Kyiv.
Inflation has been between 10-20% in Russia for several years during the 2000s, and in the 90s, it even reached hundreds of percent. High inflation is nothing new or surprising to Russians. For a Finn, it might be a cause for crisis, but for our eastern neighbor, it’s business as usual. Even during the years of hyperinflation, the Russians did not change their leader. Hardly anyone will bother to take to the streets and riot, risking imprisonment, over a moderate inflation of under 20%.
Even when adding up Russia’s public debt and the debts of state-owned enterprises, the total is still significantly smaller relative to GDP than, for example, in Finland. That massive debt bomb is definitely ticking for us here in the EU. 
So, my prediction is that in 2026, the Russian economy will weather the difficulties and we still won’t see a revolution or even an economic crisis. Let’s return to this in a year and see who was right. (And it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong; it would only be good if that rogue state collapses. However, I try to be a realist and draw conclusions based on facts.)
True, but because the interest rate level is high, Russia cannot accumulate debt in the same way as we do in the West; the limit will be reached much sooner. It is easier to manage interest expenses with a low rate of two or three percent than with 13 percent interest rates. If Finland had to pay such interest rates, we would be bankrupt or at least in a situation I don’t even want to imagine here.
Even though Russians are professional sufferers, many remember the inflation of the 1990s and the chaotic times. Few in Russia long for those days; it was a traumatic experience when life was insecure and frightening for many low-income earners. For many, this period was also a new beginning and, of course, in the long term, this was the right path for Russia (meaning the transition from communism to capitalism). But inflation (much higher than 10-20%), wage arrears, disorder, and crime flourished at that time, and the start of capitalism was a necessary but painful phase in the country’s development.