On 29 September Vladimir Putin signed decree No. 706, which rewrites point 1 of decree No. 193 of 25 March 2026 on the special procedure for taking cash roubles and refined gold out of Russia. We read both decrees in full in the official publication — three pages each. The new text does several things at once, and one of them has no precedent in this decree family: it orders cash taken off travellers at the border.

The decree took effect on the day it was signed.

The ceiling falls about 8.4-fold

The March decree banned taking cash roubles into the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union in a sum exceeding the equivalent of 100 thousand US dollars, converted at the central bank's official rate on the date of export. The new wording drops the dollar peg and names a figure in roubles:

“1. Establish a ban on taking out of the Russian Federation, into the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Azerbaijan Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan, cash currency of the Russian Federation by natural persons in a sum exceeding 1 mn roubles, by legal persons and individual entrepreneurs irrespective of the sum…”

The central bank's official rate for 29 September, the day of signing, was 84.4075 roubles to the dollar. At that rate the old ceiling stood at 8,440,750 roubles. The new one is 1,000,000. The permitted amount therefore falls by a factor of about 8.4 — and stops moving with the exchange rate, which is the second change hidden in the same sentence. Under the old text a weaker rouble automatically raised the rouble ceiling; under the new one it does not.

For legal persons and individual entrepreneurs nothing changes: the ban applies to them irrespective of the sum, as it did in March.

Three more countries

The March ban covered only the EAEU. The new list adds Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — none of them EAEU members. The decree gives no reason for choosing these three and no others.

Seizure, for the first time

Decree No. 706 inserts a new point 1¹ into the March text:

“1¹. In the event of a violation of the ban established by point 1 of this Decree, cash currency of the Russian Federation taken out of the Russian Federation is subject to seizure from natural persons in the amount exceeding 1 mn roubles, from legal persons and individual entrepreneurs in full.”

The March decree contained no such provision. A further new point 4¹ assigns implementation to three bodies at once — the interior ministry, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Customs Service — “within the limits of their powers”.

The number of exceptions rises from one to three. The airport exception survives and is tightened in wording: bank statements must now cover the whole sum being taken out, not merely accompany it. Two new exceptions appear: export by legal persons on international transport runs that begin and end outside Russia, on confirmation that the currency was brought into Russia in the first place; and export on a notification issued by the foreign ministry, for diplomatic missions, consulates, representations at international organisations and the foreign apparatus of federal bodies.

The rules on refined gold — points 2 to 4 of the March decree, including the 100-gram limit in force since 1 May — are not touched by decree No. 706.

The state orders itself to start counting

Point 2 of the decree is a separate instruction, and it is the part that says most:

“2. The Government of the Russian Federation, in agreement with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, shall within a 3-month period approve the procedure for recording cash currency of the Russian Federation taken out of the Russian Federation in accordance with this Decree.”

A state that already banned this outflow in March is now, six months later, giving itself until roughly 29 December to build a way of recording it. The instruction is an admission on the face of the document: the size of the channel being closed is not currently known to the body closing it.

Why this is about the ability to pay for the war

A cash rouble carried into the EAEU or Central Asia is the physical leg of settlements that do not pass through banks — grey imports, conversion into hard currency outside the Russian perimeter, payments that sanctions compliance will not clear. Closing that leg administratively — with a ban, a seizure power and three security agencies at the border — is cheaper for the budget than making it expensive by market means, and it is the method this year has favoured.

Cash in circulation is the M0 component of the money supply, and it is exactly what the new recording procedure is meant to cover. Our money supply indicator reads the central bank's M2 estimate, and the decree changes nothing in it; the guide explains what that aggregate does and does not include. The demand for physical cash inside the country is a story we have already followed: on 16 September the central bank raised its liquidity-deficit forecast and named rising cash demand as the single reason. This decree is about the same banknotes leaving the country, and about the state's inability, admitted in point 2, to say how many of them do.

What this changes in our model

Today — nothing. No number our indicators read has moved. M2 money supply growth stands at 86 of 100, running at 12.9% a year against a pre-war pace of about 10%. The strength index stands at 47.1 of 100, in the stress zone; the current state of all eight indicators is on the monitor.

What we do not know

How large the channel is. The decree carries no figure for cash actually taken out — not for 2026, not for the period the old ceiling was in force. How much the 8.4-fold cut removes is not derivable from the document, and by its own point 2 the state cannot yet derive it either.

Which documents will substitute for bank statements. The list of “other documents” that can establish the origin of the cash is the government's to set, and it does not yet exist.

Which airports. The list of international airports where the exception applies was set under the March decree and is not repeated here, so the reach of the exception cannot be read off this text.

Why these three countries. Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are named without explanation. Whether the choice reflects measured flows or something else, the decree does not say.