The fourth year of the war in Ukraine has been the most difficult for Russia’s debt market since at least 2022: there were defaults and forced restructurings of bond and digital financial asset (DFA) issuances for 48 companies. This was reported by RBC, citing data from Cbonds. In 2024, 25 companies had difficulties with bond payments, in 2023 – 27, and in 2022 – 32. At the same time, in 2025, 36 previously reliable companies announced defaults or restructurings on debt bonds. In 2024, such cases were a minority.
Most credit events (234 cases, or 85%) in 2025 were direct defaults (for a total of 15.6 billion rubles), while the amount of technical defaults amounted to 3.1 billion rubles, jumping by 3.8 times over the year.
The main reason for the problems was the rising cost of loan refinancing: companies that borrowed money in 2020-2021 at 13-15% had to refinance at 26-35% in 2024-2025. “The problems began to form at the end of 2024. Expensive refinancing of old debt and an increase in arrears on receivables led to cash gaps,” noted Dmitry Alexandrov, head of the analytical research department at AVI Capital.
The wave of defaults in the debt market is “highly likely” to continue in 2026, and their number will increase by another 10-20% compared to 2025 “due to the inertia of expensive refinancing and a deterioration in borrowers’ financial indicators,” predicts Vladimir Chernov, an analyst at Freedom Finance: “The risk is shifting from individual cases to systemic ones, and the average size of problematic issues may increase over time” (The Moscow Times).
