The second quarter of 2026 showed the fragility of financial trust within the Russian economy. Despite years of rhetoric about abandoning "unfriendly" currencies, Russians rushed even more intensively to buy dollars and euros, reports UNN citing the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
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In May, the number of applications for currency exchange operations increased by 365% compared to April, and compared to January, this figure increased 12 times.
At the end of the quarter, demand for foreign currency almost tripled compared to the beginning of the year - the population of the Russian Federation does not believe in the stability of the ruble
At the same time, against the backdrop of sanctions and years of attempts to push the dollar out of domestic circulation, it is the American currency that remains the main choice of Russians - it accounted for 68% of all applications.
The euro received 22%, while the yuan collected only 7% of applications. It is the yuan that Russian propaganda has been promoting for years as a worthy alternative to Western currencies.
This is a direct signal for the Kremlin: the bet on the yuanization of the financial system did not work even at the level of everyday behavior of citizens
The structure of the operations themselves also changed. At the beginning of the year, almost 59% of transactions were for amounts over 1 million rubles, or approximately 13.05 thousand dollars.
In the second quarter, the picture is different: over 90% of applications concerned amounts up to 100 thousand rubles, or about 1.3 thousand dollars. This means that ordinary Russians with much more modest means joined currency operations, not just large private capital