What the fund is for
The National Wealth Fund, the NWF, exists to smooth the federal budget over the oil cycle. The budget rule, explained in the guide to oil and gas revenues, turns revenue earned above a base oil price into currency and gold held by the fund; when revenue falls short of that base, the fund's holdings are sold to make up the difference.
These operations are announced every month. The release of 3 September 2026 is a typical one: a forecast of additional revenue for September, a correction for the month just ended, and the resulting purchase. The same mechanism can run in reverse. In January and February 2026 the ministry sold rather than bought, and February's sale of ₽226.8 billion was the largest single-month sale since the series began in 2018, as our reading of the ministry's workbook found. A buffer that is drawn on in a bad month is doing what it was built for.
The total and the liquid part are different numbers
The fund's headline size counts everything it owns. The finance ministry's monthly statement on the placement of NWF money separates two parts. The liquid part is money in the fund's accounts at the Bank of Russia, stated in roubles, in dollars and as a share of GDP. The rest is invested, mainly in shares of state-controlled banks and companies, in bonds issued to finance infrastructure and industrial projects and in deposits at the state development corporation VEB.RF.
Only the liquid part can be sold to cover a budget gap at short notice. The invested part returns cash on the issuer's schedule, through redemptions and dividends, and the dividends go to the federal budget rather than back into the fund. Moving money from one part to the other leaves the total unchanged. In August 2026 the fund placed ₽190.3 billion in bonds and deposits, 95.8% of it for aircraft leasing and production, and Interfax still reported that the fund had grown. Money can leave the spendable part while the headline total still rises.
What the liquid part holds
The monthly statement itemises the liquid part in physical units as well as in money: in the statements published from June to September 2026, yuan and gold, at times with a small rouble balance. That detail matters because the rouble and dollar values move with the gold price and exchange rates even when nothing is bought or sold.
August 2026 shows how far the two can diverge. Over the month the liquid part's rouble value rose by 8.3%, while its gold holding fell by 6.9% and its yuan holding by 3.0%. Revaluation added more than was moved out into investments, so the reported figure went up in the month the contents went down. The full arithmetic closes to a tenth of a million roubles.
How this monitor measures it
The monitor reads the liquid part in dollars from the ministry's monthly fund file on its NWF statistics page: total assets minus the invested holdings. It is not adjusted for inflation: it is read as a stock the budget can draw on now. That choice has a cost, which the methodology page states as a known open flaw: the 2022 anchor and today's reading are not the same dollars, about 18% of purchasing power apart, so a dollar in the score today buys less than a dollar did in 2022.
The pre-war anchor, worth 100, is $113.5 billion on 1 February 2022, the monitor's own reconstruction from the ministry's monthly data. The trouble line, worth 0, is $20 billion, roughly two and a half months of the registered deficit range: below it, what remains is working cash, not a reserve. The scale runs past both ends: in June 2022 the reading scored 135. The reasoning behind both numbers is on the methodology page.
In the monitor's classes the fund belongs to class 2: the state publishes the figure, but exhaustion of the liquid part could not be hidden for long. A class-2 reading cannot trigger alone; it needs a second class-2 indicator firing with it, such as oil and gas revenue.
Why liquidity is the number that matters
When revenue falls short and borrowing does not cover the whole budget deficit, the liquid part pays the rest. A stake in a bank or a bond financing aircraft leasing cannot pay a contractor this month; selling it in a hurry would mean dumping a strategic asset at a loss, if a buyer could be found at all.
The Bank of Russia treats the liquid part the same way. In its draft guidelines for monetary policy in 2027–2029, the “Risk” scenario, with a slump in commodity prices, foresees “intensive use of the liquid part of the NWF, creating a risk that the fund's resources will be exhausted quickly”.
Two distortions to keep in mind
The dollar denomination cuts both ways. The fund is counted in dollars, but the deficit it has to cover is in roubles, so a weaker rouble mechanically lets the same dollars cover more of the gap. And because the holdings are gold and yuan, their dollar value moves with the gold price and the yuan-dollar rate: the dollar figure can rise in a month when the fund holds less metal than before.
The monitor does not move its line or change its unit after seeing a reading. It keeps reporting the dollar figure under the registered method, and the devaluation effect is also set out on the methodology page.
What falling below the line would and would not mean
Crossing $20 billion would not be a date on which the state stops paying. A government with an empty liquid fund still has options: pressing state banks to buy its bonds, financing the deficit with new money, raising taxes or cutting spending. Each leaves its own trace, in money growth, in inflation or in the deficit itself. What the line marks is narrower: the point at which the buffer that absorbs a bad year has run out. The fund's place in the wider chain is traced in how Russia finances the war.
The number below
Below this guide is the newest liquid NWF figure in dollars and its score: $113.5 billion is 100, $20 billion is 0. The figure is updated with each monthly fund file from the ministry.