More and more Russians are withdrawing their money from banks due to economic problems and fears that the state could freeze or seize their savings to finance the war.
Russians began to withdraw more and more money from banks starting from March, and the withdrawals continued to increase in the following months. According to the financial platform Banks.ru, approximately 300 billion rubles (3.05 billion euros) were withdrawn each month, so that by the end of July, the total amount reached approximately 24.4 billion euros.
The cash request comes in a difficult period for Russia: Ukrainian drones have hit numerous refineries and logistics infrastructure, and the economy has drastically declined. At the same time, some Russians fear that, if the war continues to generate ever-increasing costs, the Kremlin might freeze or even seize citizens’ deposits to raise funds.
The data from the major banks show that people are not just afraid of a potential problem, but have already started to move their money from accounts. Five of the seven largest banks in Russia have recorded declines in individual deposits, according to Euronews.com.
Gazprombank suffered the most losses: 299.5 billion rubles (3.04 billion euros) in four months, which represents 10.8% of the total deposits.
At Rosselkhozbank, customers have withdrawn 270.5 billion rubles (2.75 billion euros), which is over 15% of the money they had in deposits.
Withdrawals were also significant at Alfa-Bank, the largest private bank in Russia, from which 179.4 billion rubles (1.82 billion euros) were withdrawn, equivalent to 5.6% of deposits.
At Sovcombank and VTB, customers withdrew 81.7 billion rubles (830 million euros), and 20.4 billion rubles (207 million euros), respectively.
Even Sberbank has not remained outside this wave. After a period in which deposits remained stable, customers withdrew 211.6 billion rubles (2.15 billion euros) in June and another 31.8 billion rubles (323 million euros) in July.
The only one that had a different evolution was T-Bank, its deposits increasing by 193 billion rubles (1.96 billion euros).
In this context, the Bank of Russia has calculated that the total amount of cash in circulation increased in July by 643.4 billion rubles (6.53 billion euros), the largest monthly increase this year. The trend continued in August, when Russians withdrew another 300 billion rubles in the first two weeks.
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