Russia’s international reserves rose by $700 million in a week

The volume of Russia’s international reserves as of July 7 amounted to $583.1 billion, reported on the website of the Central Bank. Over the week, the indicator increased by $0.7 billion (+0.1%).

On June 30, the volume of gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Federation amounted to $582.4 billion. The Bank of Russia recorded the same figure on July 1. Relative to June 1, international reserves decreased by $1.7 billion, or 0.3%.

The peak of the volume of international reserves this year came at the beginning of February – $597 billion. By the beginning of March, the reserves decreased (to $574.2 billion), and then by May 1 they rose to $595.7 billion.

International reserves are at the disposal of the Central Bank and the Russian government, they are highly liquid assets. International reserves are made up of foreign currency assets, monetary gold, as well as special drawing rights, a reserve position in the IMF and other reserve assets.

Against the backdrop of a special operation in Ukraine, Western countries imposed large-scale sanctions against the Russian Federation, and also froze Russian assets abroad. 3 July European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders informedthat the amount of frozen Russian assets in the EU after the start of the military operation in Ukraine is 207 billion euros.

In November 2022, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen claimedthat the West blocked 300 billion euros of Central Bank reserves and 19 billion euros of private funds of businessmen connected with Russia. At the same time, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov in March 2022 declaredthat because of the sanctions, Russia has lost access to about $ 300 billion of gold and foreign exchange reserves. He estimated the total amount of reserves at $640 billion. The Kremlin called the freezing of reserves a theft and promised to take action.