From late February to early March this year, Russia’s international reserves saw a notable shift, dipping by 2.3 billion dollars over the week that began on February 24 and concluded on March 3. By the start of spring, the total stood at 578.4 billion dollars, a figure published by the Central Bank. This movement reflects a combination of market factors and policy-driven actions that influence how the country manages its foreign assets and exchange rate stability amid evolving global conditions.
The central bank clarified that several forces were at play. Negative revaluations of reserve assets, along with operations carried out under the budget rule, emerged as key contributors to the decline. These mechanisms can affect the valuation of foreign-currency holdings and the liquidity positions that the regulator maintains to meet balance-of-payments needs and support economic stability during periods of external shocks or price volatility in commodity markets.
According to the bank’s report, “As of March 3, the volume of international reserves decreased by US$2.3 billion, or 0.4%, over the week to US$578.4 billion.” This precise wording underscores the week-on-week change and places it within a broader context of reserve management that seeks to balance liquidity with prudent risk controls. The data illustrate how reserve levels respond to both external price dynamics and internal policy choices, including asset revaluations and the structural steps taken to align reserves with anticipated import needs and debt obligations.
Looking back at February, reserves registered a larger monthly decline of 3.82%. At the end of the month, reserves hovered near 580.7 billion dollars, while mid-month readings had shown about 582.1 billion dollars. This sequence highlights how short-term fluctuations can accumulate to a meaningful monthly adjustment, influenced by shifts in commodity prices, exchange-rate expectations, and the pace of export activity—factors that feed into how the central bank calibrates its intervention footprint and the composition of its asset mix.
On March 10, the bank disclosed that, in the first two months of the year, Russia’s foreign trade surplus contracted by roughly two and a half times relative to the same period in 2022. By the end of February, the surplus stood at about 15.3 billion dollars, a decline driven largely by weaker export performance in key categories and by price movements across principal export goods. This development has implications for the balance of payments, the pressure on reserve assets, and the broader outlook for the country’s external sector, as policymakers monitor the trajectory of global demand, commodity markets, and the competitiveness of national production in a shifting macro environment.