Ukrainian motorsport body seeks sanctions against Russia

In the second quarter of 2026, Russia experienced an unprecedented $12.2 billion gap in its balance of payments, according to data from the Bank of Russia. This unexplained discrepancy appears under the "net errors and omissions" category, which includes anomalies that cannot be assigned to standard balance-of-payments components.

The figure marked a nearly ninefold increase compared to the $1.4 billion gap reported in the first quarter of the same year. The Moscow Times noted that this $12.2 billion gap represented the largest quarterly figure in Bank of Russia statistics since records began in 1994, surpassing the previous high of $8.3 billion set in the first quarter of 2009.

The Bank of Russia refrains from classifying the entire amount as capital flight; instead, it treats it as a statistical discrepancy. Economists quoted by The Moscow Times suggested that a portion of the gap might be due to money leaving Russia through channels not recorded as imports, foreign investments, or debt repayments. Despite this significant gap, Russia managed to post a $21.4 billion current-account surplus during the same period.

The country's goods exports amounted to $125.7 billion, while the trade surplus stood at $38.3 billion, as per Bank of Russia data.