‼️ 🇷🇺 NWF Update As of September 2026: The liquid portion of the Russian National Welfare Fund holds: 👉 183.9960 Billion Yuan (-5.6873 billion) 👉 131.4879 tons of gold (-9,753.8 tons) 👉 1.6821 Billion Rubles (+1.6821 billion) (Totals for August) Dividend payments came in
‼️ 🇷🇺 NWF Update As of August 2026: The liquid portion of the Russian National Welfare Fund holds: 👉 189.6833 Billion Yuan (-0.1105 billion) 👉 141.2417 tons of gold (+0.1589 tons) 👉 0 Billion Rubles (0 billion) (Totals for July) Ultimately not much changed, it was just moved around
Here is the Table of Contents for this thread.
The Russian National Welfare Fund Thread Table of Contents
Because this thread is coming out much later than usual, I’m going to try to trim down some of the usual detailed explanations so we can focus on the more interesting stuff. (If you’re lost, go back and read through some previous months threads) Here is everything that is reported to be in the NWF. The liquid assets are at the top. There is a footnote
Here is that footnote
Here is how funds were allocated and received:
🔴 Red indicate money that went out 🟢 Green indicate money that came in 🔵 Blue to indicate the big ticket items of interest A lot of money was reportedly allocated for planes and Rostec got another pile of cash.
Last month I talked about this spreadsheet I made that shows some of the illiquid assets for 2026. Here is the update Items in blue are valued based on MOEX. (Keep an eye on VTB & Aeroflot on these charts) Remember that VTB’s preferred shares were all converted to ordinary shares.
And then this chart shows the changes month to month. See all the funds Rostec has gotten?
These Rostec investments are something I’ve been discussing with @leoskyview.bsky.social and I think he has found the bonds and the return on both tranches are just 1.5%. Which answers the question of who is the one getting bailed out. It’s Rostec.
Before I move on, I spent some time creating these same charts for 2025. You can see when the DOM.RF shares started being valued via MOEX. And keep in mind that the VTB preferred shares were converted into ordinary shares. But look at the value of VTB & Aeroflot since the beginning of 2025 👀
Here are both those charts together
Then here is the 2025 month on month change table.
VTB shares keep plummeting. Possibly due to Ukraine striking Wildberries and Ozon warehouse with drones.
‼️ Russia: “VTB shares hit a new all-time low.” 🥳 kommersant.ru
Which is problematic for the additional share issue they want to do. It’s the whole reason the preferred shares were converted to ordinary shares.
“As Freedom Global's leading analyst, Natalia Milchakova, explained to Kommersant, the placement price of VTB's additional share issue, at 87 rubles per share, cannot be changed.” Who is going to buy it?
Recall that the government wanted to sell a large portion of their stake in Aeroflot
‼️Russia: “Russia has decided to put a 23.76% stake in Aeroflot, Russia's largest air carrier, up for sale” 👉 The state owns 73.8% of the airline's shares ru.themoscowtimes.com
🇷🇺: *tries to play it cool* 😂
Then there was some bad news announced for Sberbank recently.
‼️ Russia: “Sberbank may gain control of the development company Samolet.” 👉 “Russia's largest developer by current housing construction volume” 👀 🍿 kommersant.ru
I’ve said this before, but when you dig into things, there isn’t a huge amount of wiggle room in these illiquid assets. And I think people have misconceptions of how exactly a…I don’t like to use the word “collapse”…so let’s say “a sharp downturn” would look. Ok, let’s move on to the rest of the report… Here is the bottom of the report that shows the income from investments that was taken and applied to the Federal Budget. This includes the dividends
Here I did all the highlighting so you can see it better
So I made a table of this data so far for 2026. So this month alone, the Federal Budget received from the NWF ALONE 👉 over 504 billion rubles 498 billion of that was dividends. The government holds other shares elsewhere that also receive dividends
So I had warned you in advance that the deficit might shrink this month BECAUSE of the dividend payments. And it did. But it gets worse…🤗
So we can see the 660 billion ruble surplus this month. And you can now tell how much of that can JUST from the NWF income. I don’t currently have a good way to see the OTHER dividend payments that came in to the government but we know they exist.
I had warned you before that this boost was coming, and I think we can probably tie a lot of this to the dividend payments that came in this month, that were related to the 2025 calendar year. But, even here I think we can see a deterioration.
And in the pile of 💩 Putin decided to share…
Putin said some things, so let’s see if I can run through this horsesh*t quickly. Let’s start by saving some time and agreeing the “official” inflation is nonsense and in multiple alternate indicators suggest that it has been in double digits for some time. kommersant.ru
He decided to brag about that
As a result of 2025 dividend payments, 425 billion of which were JUST Sberbank.
But they actually had a bigger surplus in August 2025. So it seems like things got worse in 2026. 😈 But there’s more!
Here, you can compare it to 2025. Things are still getting worse
I made the same table for 2025. And look when Aeroflot paid their dividends last year. 👀
I think the NWF dividends are probably done for this year. I know Russian Railways isn’t paying out at all. I highlighted the total in yellow so you can compare.
Now on top of everything else, I want you to consider what has likely been double digit inflation over the past several years. Which makes everything look that much worse. The NWF fund sold off a bunch of its gold (and yuan) AGAIN. People are asking the Russian Central Bank some very pointed questions about what exactly is going on.
11 September 2026 The Russian Central Bank gets asked about why it’s selling it’s gold reserves. Remember: DO NOT TRUST THE RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK TO TELL THE TRUTH THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.
Let me get you the full report and the link and then we can look at the bucket 🪣 Here is the full report.
Here is where you can access it. The original is in Russian, my screenshots were auto-translated to English. Note: The website is currently available to most of us, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get blocked (again) in the future minfin.gov.ru
minfin.gov.ru
Here is thread on the budget rule update. This is linked to the NWF.
‼️Russia: Budget [Fiscal] Rule Update Here is the Russian Ministry of Finance’s press release “On oil and gas revenues and operations for the purchase/sale of foreign currency and gold in the domestic foreign exchange market” This is connected to the NWF minfin.gov.ru
And you can see that things still aren’t going all that great. Especially not in comparison to the way it gets described in Western Media.
Here is my updated table
For example:
‼️ Russia: “The damper ate up the oil profit” 👉 “if we take the total oil and gas budget revenues for the first eight months, they are currently behind both 2025 and 2024, and only ahead of 2023.” 🍿 kommersant.ru
Look, it’s hard to put into words what exactly is going on. I’ll try to do it briefly. Russian media doesn’t discuss the high oil prices from the Iran war as a huge “win.” In general, they suggest that the longer it goes on the worse it is for Russia. Because we’re talking about the NET result. I *guess* you could try to describe it as “short term win, long term loss” but it’s not really even that much of a win. I can acknowledge that things were looking catastrophic at the beginning of the year, so short term, it may have given them some breathing room? Maybe? But it’s hard to separate this one factor from all the other things going on, and the high oil prices were NOT enough to stop the decline. So it’s all still getting worse. A while ago, I put together this analogy that I think is worth reading. Because, I think people get distracted by JUST looking at the figures they’re pointed towards and missing the bigger picture.
‼️ Economic Analogy Lesson Thread: Mistakes people make interpreting Russian Economic Data For our example, we’re going to be using this Sears Mail Order Home No. 117 from the 1908 catalog! archive.org
Russia is continuing to increase the taxes and fees on everyone AND they’re cutting the spending on EVEN MORE things, so they can spend it on the war. It’s like driving around with your check engine light on and bragging about the money you saved by NOT EVER CHANGING YOUR OIL. Bank account looks good until your car breaks down. 🤨 All Russia is doing is continuing to dig a deeper hole for itself. IT WILL GET WORSE ~ The End ~