On its own site, the Russian finance ministry has published an interview with its deputy minister, Alexei Moiseev. He gave it to RBC at the Eastern Economic Forum, and the ministry posted it on 3 September. Two points bear on what we measure. The internal target for privatisation proceeds this year is 500 billion roubles, against the usual benchmark of 100 billion. And the Aeroflot sale will not stop at the stake held by the state property agency: it will also take shares off the balance sheet of the National Wealth Fund — the fund this site tracks.
What he said
On the amounts:
“We have always had a bar of 100 billion roubles; this year we have already passed 300 billion. I think that is not the limit, but it depends on market conditions. We will gather about another 100 billion roubles this year — on a conservative forecast. But my internal reference point is 500 billion roubles.”
Asked whether the share offering could be pushed beyond autumn 2026:
“Yes, of course. For this company in particular we plan to sell not only the block of shares belonging to Rosimushchestvo, but shares from the balance sheet of the NWF.”
The two figures that frame the exchange — 112 billion roubles received from privatisation in 2025, and 260 billion in the first half of 2026 — come from the correspondent's question, not from the deputy minister. He does not dispute them and adds his own. They are not sourced in the text and we did not verify them against budget reporting, so we treat them only as figures reported by the correspondent.
The shares are inside the fund we measure
Footnote 4 to the ministry's monthly National Wealth Fund table — the same file our parser downloads every morning — says it plainly:
“Since October 2020, ordinary shares of PJSC Aeroflot have been carried within the NWF at market value, calculated on the basis of the weighted average share price.”
Sberbank ordinary shares have been carried the same way since April 2020, under footnote 3.
That puts the holding inside the fund and, at the same time, outside our indicator. The table has two parts: money in the fund's accounts at the Bank of Russia, and what is “placed in other permitted assets”. A shareholding is not money in an account, so it belongs to the second. Our indicator uses the first, because that is the part the budget can actually spend.
On 1 August the fund held 12,720.85 billion roubles in all, of which 9,028.06 billion were other permitted assets. The difference — 3,692.8 billion roubles, about $46.2 billion at the rate implied by the ministry's own dollar figure of $159.29 billion for the whole fund — is the amount we score. Seventy-one per cent of the fund sits in the part we do not count.
Which way our number moves depends on what the interview does not say
If the proceeds return to the fund, its liquid part grows without a single new rouble of oil and gas revenue: an illiquid holding becomes money in an account, and the total does not change. If the proceeds go to the budget instead, the fund's total falls and the liquid part does not move. Those are opposite outcomes for the same indicator, and the interview settles neither.
We also cannot size the effect. The monthly table does not break out the Aeroflot position. “Other permitted assets” is split only by currency — 8,520.53 billion roubles and 507.53 billion in foreign currency on 1 August — never by instrument. So the ministry discloses that the fund owns the shares, and not what they are worth.
For scale, 500 billion roubles is about 3.9% of the fund's total, and against the rolling twelve-month federal deficit of 7,460 billion roubles it is about a fifteenth. Set against a single month's cash, it is real money; set against the hole, it is not.
The shop after this year
The most important sentence in the interview is about 2027:
“But right now, in our ‘shop’, there will not be much left of the large assets — the kind that would deliver a comparable sum — after the plans for 2026. To keep up that pace for several years, we need a decision to be taken to reduce the state's share in key assets.”
He names the target himself: down to “50% plus one share” from 75% or 100%, and in some cases to zero with a golden share and special conditions, “as in the decree on Sheremetyevo airport”. This year's number is reachable by selling what has already been assembled — the stake in NMTP, sold to an investor without going to the exchange; Transbunker; the Kamchatka port; agricultural assets in Krasnodar territory; what remains of Makfa's property in Chelyabinsk, “all of it over the next 4 months”. Next year's number needs a political decision that has not been taken.
The sale list he describes contains four companies, of which he names two: Aeroflot and VTB. Lesta is to be sold directly to an interested investor, he hopes in September or October.
Not a distressed sale
Moiseev is also explicit that nothing is being dumped. The privatisation law allows three stages — an auction bidding up from the market valuation, a public offer with a cut-off at 50% of the starting price, and a minimum admissible price of 10% of market value. The ministry does not use the third:
“Some still do not believe that we will not go to the third stage. But this is our deliberate decision, and it was discussed in the government. We sell only by the first two methods; below 50% we do not sell.”
He calls the offer of 28 roubles a share for Aeroflot “simply illogical”, says there is no pressing need to sell right now, and notes that Sberbank CIB won the tender to organise the offering. State assets are also sold through PSB under presidential decree No. 693.
Read together, this is a seller raising its target fivefold and refusing to sell below half of valuation. The urgency is in the number, not yet in the behaviour.
What this changes in our model
Nothing today. Liquid NWF scores 28 out of 100 at $46.2 billion on 1 August, against a pre-war anchor of $113.5 billion and a registered trouble line of $20 billion. An interview is not a decree, no date is fixed for the offering, and 500 billion is described as a reference point rather than a plan.
What it changes is what we will watch. When a sale happens, the two lines to read are the fund's total and its other permitted assets in the same monthly file, because the difference between them is our indicator — and a sale inside the fund can move that difference without anything happening to Russia's ability to pay for its war. On 21 August we drew the same line about the base oil price: a change in an accounting threshold creates and destroys no real money. Today's other piece is about the channel that fills the same fund from outside, and it has just narrowed.
What we do not know
What the Aeroflot stake inside the fund is worth: the table gives no per-asset breakdown, and we found no ministry document that does. Where the proceeds of selling it would go — to the fund or to the budget — which is what decides the direction of the effect on our number. When the offering happens: he says only that it can be pushed beyond autumn. Whether the 500 billion exists in any document; it is described as an internal reference point, and we found no order or decree behind it. And whether the 112 billion and 260 billion are right, since they come from the question rather than from a ministry publication.