OREANDA-NEWS According to the press secretary of the President of Russia, Western countries are pushing Russia to default. He stressed that the default is artificial, since there are no grounds for recognizing a default in Russia. He also advised journalists to study more carefully the mechanism for making payments to Russia on external obligations in order not to create panic once again. According to the Accounts Chamber, Russia's external public debt has decreased by $2.6 billion since the beginning of the year and amounts to $57.147 billion. Compared with the state on January 1 of this year — then the volume of public debt was $59,702.0 million — by April it had decreased by $2,558.8 million, or 4.3%.

Earlier, on May 30, the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that the state is able to service the external debt. He also denied rumors of a possible default in Russia, noting that there are no objective reasons for this. In May 2022, the head of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, Anton Siluanov, stated that Russia would not default and was quite capable of paying its debt in rubles if the US government stopped blocking payments on Russian debt.