Digital Ruble as a Tool for Control: Candid Insights from a Top Russian Lawmaker
If you thought that the Russian government isn’t participating in the communitarian movement, here’s another reality check.
Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, shared with Rossiyskaya Gazeta that limitations on digital ruble expenditures will be phased in after the Central Bank of Russia’s CBDC reaches widespread use.
The prominent legislator disclosed that Russian authorities are already exploring “possible usage scenarios” for the digital ruble, which can be coded to restrict or block specific transactions.
Aksakov suggested, for instance, that maternity capital and child benefits could be distributed via digital rubles to ensure they “can’t be spent on alcohol and cigarettes.”
He argued that such measures are “justified and necessary” because “social support measures would clearly become more effective.”
The lawmaker elaborated:
“This applies to social payments and other forms of government spending. In my opinion, the benefits in this case outweigh the arguments that it is wrong to issue both free and non-free digital rubles at the same time. Control is needed; there is no other way.”
Aksakov added that Russian citizens themselves could also leverage the digital ruble’s programmable features. That’s the line, hook, and sinker!
“Not only the state will be able to use the new opportunities, but also the people themselves. When parents give their child money for school expenses, they want him to buy himself a lunch, not a pack of cigarettes or something worse. Or spend it all on video games, or give it to scammers. In the future, they will be able to establish such restrictions.”
He forecast that “balanced decisions” regarding these controls would be rolled out “gradually” – the communitarian way – once the digital ruble is in mass circulation.
Yet, the Bank of Russia has consistently refuted, on the surface, claims that such “balanced decisions” are under review, maintaining that “the choice of which form of ruble [cash, non-cash, or digital] to use will remain with the citizens” and “you can spend your digital rubles as you see fit.”
The central bank also labeled as a “myth” the notion that social payments would be exclusively issued in digital rubles.
Aksakov’s statements cast doubt on assurances that digital rubles can be seamlessly converted into cash or non-cash rubles.
While Russians have been told they can move digital rubles from a digital wallet to a bank account and withdraw them as cash, questions arise: How can digital rubles with spending restrictions be turned into cash? And if “colored” or “non-free” digital rubles can simply be cashed out at an ATM, what’s the purpose of imposing controls on their use?
This tension may explain Vedomosti’s report from December 2021:
“Blockchain consultant and cryptocurrency researcher Denis Smirnov is critical of the idea of the Central Bank: ‘For people, the introduction of the digital ruble is the realization of the most terrible scenarios described by science fiction writers in dystopias.’ According to the expert, with the advent of the digital ruble, absolute transparency will reign in the field of personal finance, which means that the human right to privacy will be under attack.”
Last July, President Vladimir Putin urged the “full-scale implementation” of the digital ruble, which joined cash and non-cash rubles as Russia’s third legal tender in 2023.
Though initially planned for release this summer, the Bank of Russia’s CBDC is now slated to debut in early 2026.
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