Moscow posts surplus as shares sink

Russia recorded its first monthly budget surplus of 2026 in June, 0.28tn roubles, on Finance Ministry data reported on 9 July⁠¹. Liquid assets in the Russia National Wealth Fund, Moscow's rainy-day reserve, rose 200bn roubles month on month to 3.61tn roubles (about $46.4bn) as of 1 July, with the total fund at 13.104tn roubles⁠².

That requires a correction to this briefing's own framing. Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov projected in May that liquid fund assets would fall to roughly $12.5bn by year-end, and the Finance Ministry then topped the fund up by 1.3tn roubles to cover the first-half shortfall. Lowdown has run a reserve-depletion narrative on this topic since April on that basis. At about $46bn on 1 July with five months left to run, the projection looks unlikely to be met, and readers who took the depletion timetable from us should discount it.

The wider fiscal picture has not turned, and the surplus should not be read as recovery. The half-year deficit stands at 5.73tn roubles, 2.5% of GDP and 2.35tn roubles worse than the same point last year, with spending running 16.1% above 2025⁠³. The Finance Ministry attributes June's swing to front-loaded contract advances tapering off rather than to revenue picking up, which loads the heavier bill onto the second half.

The equity market tells a third story again. The Moscow Exchange index has fallen for 17 consecutive weeks, its longest unbroken decline since 1997, back to the level it touched on the day of the February 2022 invasion. Retail investors kept buying through it, putting 910bn roubles into brokerage accounts in the first quarter with equities at 30% of their portfolios. Alexander Kolyandr of the Center for European Policy Analysis, who published the figures on 16 July, argues the slide suits the Kremlin in the short run, since savings shifting into bank deposits help fund state borrowing, while it undercuts Vladimir Putin's target of doubling market capitalisation to two-thirds of GDP by 2030 and starves the domestic technology drive of capital⁠⁴.