The euro was part of said currency basket but was excluded in December 2022 due to a decrease in the volume of trade between Belarus and the European Union.

[5][6][7] As a result of the breakup of the supply chain in the former Soviet enterprises, goods started to be bought and sold in the market, often requiring cash settlement.

The Belarusian unit of the USSR State Bank had neither the capacity nor the licence to print Soviet banknotes, so the government decided to introduce its own national currency to ease the cash situation.

[9] From the beginning of his presidency in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko began to suggest the idea of integration with the Russian Federation, and undertook steps in this direction.

Belarus' economy was largely a Soviet-style centrally controlled one heavily reliant on cheap energy supplies from Russia.

Previously, Belarus was one of the few countries in the world never to have issued coins; this was largely due to rampant inflation, a problem since independence.

Belarus is a large producer of commemorative coinage for the numismatic market, most particularly gold and silver bullion coins and non-circulating legal tender.

On 29 December 2010, the National Bank of Belarus introduced new 50- and 50,000-ruble banknotes to bring the inscriptions on the notes into compliance with the new rules of Belarusian spelling and punctuation.

On 4 November 2015, the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus announced that the banknotes that had been in use at that time would be replaced by the new ones due to the upcoming redenomination.

[19] Both banknotes and coins have been ready in 2009, but the financial crisis prevented them from being put into circulation immediately, resulting in a 7-year delay conditional on the necessity to lower inflation.

[21] Alexei Moiseev, chief economist at Russia's VTB Capital, said at the time that "a '91-style meltdown is almost inevitable", referring to the crisis which accompanied the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

[24] As of mid-March 2022, the Belarusian ruble had reached an all-time low of Rbls 3.33 per US$1, during fallout from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.