Russia, due to the sanctions of the United States, Europe and their allies, which blocked the Russian Federation access to part of the gold and foreign exchange reserves, cannot use almost half of them – about $300 billion.

"This is about half of these reserves that we had. We have a total amount of reserves of about $640 billion, about $300 billion of reserves are now in a state in which we cannot use them," Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview at one of the Russian TV channels, noting that part of the gold and foreign exchange reserves, including the National Wealth Fund, are frozen.

The minister also recalled that part of the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Federation is in yuan, in connection with which the West is trying to get China to also restrict Russia's access to its currency.

Siluanov said that due to the freezing of reserves, the Russian Federation had problems with the fulfillment of obligations, including debt. The minister repeated the thesis already voiced earlier: sovereign debt, including those denominated in foreign currency, Russia will serve in rubles until the moment when the gold and foreign exchange reserves are unfrozen.

"We need to pay for critical imports. Food, medicine, a number of other vital goods. But - I repeat once again - the debts that we have to pay to countries that have been unfriendly to the Russian Federation and have made such restrictions on the use of gold and foreign exchange reserves - it is in these countries, we will pay the debts in ruble terms," the minister said.

On March 1, the United States issued a directive prohibiting Americans from any transactions with the Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Finance and the National Welfare Fund (NWF). Similar decisions were announced by the UK, Japan, Canada, and Switzerland.

The current structure of reserves is not known - the Bank of Russia discloses detailed information with a lag of at least six months.