Will Russian steal money from its citizens’ bank accounts?
Firstly, it might not have to. Russia might get money without doing anything.
Russia is running out of available money to fund its invasion of peaceful countries. ‘Available’ is the key word because Russian assets frozen in the Euroclear depository in Belgium ($300 billion equivalent) will be released back to the Russian Government unless EU states agree unanimously to renew this measure in July 2025 (renewal is required at 6-month intervals).
‘Unanimous’ is the next key word because the Slovakian and Hungarian leaders are both supportive of Russian fascism and both, individually, have the power to unfreeze these funds. The EU leadership will be pressured into offering these two countries whatever their price may be to outweigh their inclination to serve Russia. Usually, the EU’s persuasion comes in the form of economic and legal threats, so we could see a mixture of strategies used in the attempt to keep the vote in line.
Russian assets frozen in US institutions ($5 billion) are less significant than the bulk held outside their jurisdiction but could be released suddenly if the US administration decided that would be in their President’s interest, e.g. as part of a trade deal with the world’s 11th largest economy by GDP (smaller that Canada, with which the US has chosen to prevent trade). Although the US President believes he is the Russian President’s friend, despite the latter being subject to trial on charges of genocide, a partnership should not make financial sense because Russia’s economic ranking depends entirely on their export of oil and gas. If the UK and EU nations were to sanction (secondary sanction) the buyers of Russian oil and gas (primarily India and China), the Russian economy would no longer be worth trading with as you can’t sustain a country for long with fertiliser and computer fraud. However, the move to secondary sanctions (hit the customers) would be hard to gain consensus for because the next largest buyers of Russian fuel are the EU nations, such as Hungary, Slovakia (oil and gas buying exemptions), followed by Germany and many others who pay Russia for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and pretend it isn’t technically the same as Russian gas. What’s more likely would be to place secondary sanctions on countries which pay more for Russian oil than the current price cap, which could be lowered, i.e. to reduce the producer’s economy by narrowing the profit margin to zero.
However, let’s assume that Russian assets are not released back to them by the EU.
Costs: The war in Ukraine since 2022 (not the original attack in 2014) has been very expensive. The cost to Russia in 3 years has been over $450 billion in Western sanctions such as the oil price cap and loss of market access for manufactured goods, $200 billion in military operations and $10 billion in arms sales (data: Center for European Policy Analysis, CEPA). There will also be a long-term cost to pay for social care (death benefits, invalidity, military pensions, reduced manual workforce, rebuilding energy infrastructure, permanent loss of trading partners and markets).
Reserves: In May 2025, the National Wealth Fund of Russia was valued at $210 billion, which is enough to pay for about another year of military operations if combined with keeping the State running after the loss to civilian industries and infrastructure from cannibalisation becomes critical. This financial asset is mostly held in Chinese yuan renminbi and gold. Russia will be loathed to sell its Chinese currency because China is now its main trading partner and will only accept payment in rubles at a discounted rate. Russia can and probably will soon start selling its gold but will have to do this slowly, otherwise the market value will fall reactively to each sale. This asset is finite and will obviously run out before the end of hostilities against Ukraine.
Russia can’t borrow: Russia cannot secure money on international markets by issuing bonds, or petition the International Monetary Fund for rescue capital, because Russia is a pariah state facing the realistic prospect of financial ruin. Its President has shown a willingness to ignore contracts, international agreements etc. and to break the conventions of property law by nationalising foreign businesses and giving them to his friends. Investing in Russia with its current administration is insane. Although the Russian President is probably the richest man in the world today, it would be out of character for him to contribute to the Russian war effort.
Printing money: Russia has already been using quantitative easing at scale to fund the war during the last two years and the total of rubles in circulation is now double what it was at the start of 2022, but the President has dictated a minimum exchange rate for the ruble, so it does not collapse relative to other currencies. Therefore, there is a limit to how much new currency can be put into the system before confidence collapses.
The final recourse
The Russian President, and the government he controls completely, cannot stop paying for the war and call it off because they would be in personal danger from their own population and returning soldiers. They have already forced all privately held foreign currency to be converted to rubles at a punitive rate, so can’t take that. There is one more reserve of money they could use. The Russian population collectively is understood to have rubles equivalent to $550 billion in their personal bank accounts. The Russian State would not steal all of this money completely because a popular uprising would be inevitable. However.
Option 1. The President might attempt to placate the population by either seizing a windfall tax from all accounts containing more than a certain threshold of rubles. The very poor people of Russia might agree with this as it would be seen as only harming the rich who have had it good for too long and would wipe the smiles off the faces of compensated wives of fallen soldiers, who they secretly envy (in 2023, 74% of marriages in Russia ended in divorce and in 2025 so far it is almost 82% — Russian figures). It would be difficult for the President to rob all other oligarchs as he depends on their loyalty to stay in power, so they would be exempted. Result: The wealthy would hear about it first and leave the country forever with their liquid assets (the borders are currently still open). The middle class would react too late, after the borders close. Many of the regime’s wealthy kingpins would be discovered to have escaped that scalping and the knowledge they had would generate extensive unrest. The cash grab would not raise as much as the next suggestion.
Option 2. Stage one: The President could pass legislation nationalising all of Russia’s largest primary industrial companies (Rosneft, Surgutneftegas, Gazprom, Lukoil, Transneft). All of these companies are descending toward insolvency anyway and will soon have borrowings and energy field maintenance costs surmounting the value of their assets. The oil and gas fields themselves are licensed from the State, not company assets.
Stage two: The Russian Government could then freeze the $550 billion equivalent from all of Russia’s personal bank accounts and extract it to fund the war. In return, so State Media can say it is not theft, each account holder would be given a promissory note stating that they own a fractional share in one of the largest companies. As members of the public will be unable to exchange their certificate for money, its intrinsic value will be paper. As the company they have a stake in owes more money to the state banks than its assets are worth, the Russian Government will give up nothing in return for $550 billion.
Stage three: The calculation the Russian President will make is that this huge influx of funding will enable Russia to conquer all of Ukraine and then the oligarchs can move in to sell Ukraine’s assets to restore Russian State’s reserves — and also their own — as a reward for loyalty to the President. Stage 3 is the only part of this plan which will inevitably fail. Result: Russia collapses into absolute poverty after a year or two of overwhelming internal and external struggle, members of the regime escape to already-prepared villas in Venezuela and Ukraine liberates their country.
Any questions? Address them on a postcard to: The Senate Building, Moscow Kremlin Complex, Russian Federation. While it’s still viable.
