As a result of monetary reforms by Peter the Great, the ruble became a circulating coin in 1704 just before the establishment of the Russian Empire.

This is attested in a 13th-century birch bark manuscript from Novgorod, where both ruble and grivna referred to 204 grams (6.6 troy ounces) of silver.

The form rouble is preferred by the Oxford English Dictionary and probably derives from the transliteration into French used among the Tsarist aristocracy.

[d] The decision to subdivide it primarily into 100 copper kopeks, rather than 200 Muscovite denga, made the Russian ruble the world's first decimal currency.

[29][30][31] With the outbreak of World War I, the gold standard peg was dropped and the ruble fell in value, suffering from hyperinflation in the early 1920s.

In 1843, the Assignation Bank ceased operations, and state credit notes (Russian: государственные кредитные билеты, gosudarstvenniye kreditniye bilety) were introduced in denominations of 1, 3, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 rubles.

The final collapse of the "ruble zone" began with the exchange of banknotes by the Central Bank of Russia on Russian territory at the end of 1993.

[11][12][13] Russian ruble was used in Kyrgyzstan,[2] Moldova[3] and Turkmenistan[4] until 1993, in Armenia,[5] Azerbaijan,[5] Belarus,[6] Georgia,[7] Kazakhstan[8] and Uzbekistan[9] until 1994, and in Tajikistan[10] until 1995.

The coins depict the double-headed eagle without a crown, sceptre and globus cruciger above the legend "Банк России" ("Bank of Russia").

It is exactly the same eagle that the artist Ivan Bilibin painted after the February Revolution as the coat of arms for the Russian Republic.

For this reason, there have been several instances of (now worthless) Soviet and Russian ruble coins being used on a large scale to defraud automated vending machines in Switzerland.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian ruble banknotes and coins have been notable for their lack of portraits, which traditionally were included under both the Tsarist and Communist regimes.

[46] On 15 July 2024 the Central Bank of the Russian Federation closed the statistics of the over-the-counter currency market,[47][48][49] and three days later the sale of ruble-note artwork on toilet paper was banned by a judge from Moscow.

This included the symbol РР (the initials of Российский Рубль "Russian ruble"), which received preliminary approval from the Central Bank.

On 11 December 2013, the official symbol for the ruble became , a Cyrillic letter Er with a single added horizontal stroke,[69][70] though the abbreviation "руб."

[81] A number of commemorative smaller denominations of these coins exist in circulation as well, depicting national historic events and anniversaries.

The 2,000 ₽ banknote will bear images of the Russian Far East: the bridge to Russky Island and the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Oblast.

[85] In 2018, the Central Bank issued a 100 ₽ "commemorative" banknote designed to recognize Russia's role as the host of the 2018 World Cup soccer tournament.

Despite the note being intended for legal tender transactions, the Central Bank has simultaneously refused to allow the country's automated teller machines (ATMs) to recognize or accept it.

[86] In March 2021, the Central Bank announced plans to gradually update the designs of the 10 ₽, 50 ₽, 100 ₽, 1,000 ₽ and 5,000 ₽ banknotes and make them more secure; this is expected to be completed in 2025.

[90] 2022 For the rest of the 2017–2025 series, the following designs are planned:[93] All Russian ruble banknotes are currently printed at the state-owned factory Goznak in Moscow, which was founded on 6 June 1919 and operated ever since.

I submitted a parliamentary request and forwarded it directly to the head of the central bank asking for the banknote to be brought into line with the law protecting children and to remove this Apollo.

[97] The NBU stated that the ban applies to all financial operations, including cash transactions, currency exchange activities and interbank trade.

The bottom right corner of the obverse bears a QR-code, which contains a link to the page of the Bank of Russia website with the description of the note's security features.

[107] On 23 November 2010, at a meeting of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, it was announced that Russia and China had decided to use their own national currencies for bilateral trade, instead of the US dollar.

[118] During the month of March 2022, the ruble gradually recovered back to its pre-war value of ~80 Rubles per dollar, partially due to increased gas and oil demand from Western companies, as they feared a potential ban on Russian resources,[119] as well as various economic measures designed to prop up the currency.

[121][127] The crisis affected the Russian economy, both consumers and companies, and regional financial markets, as well as Putin's ambitions regarding the Eurasian Economic Union.

[44] On 23 March 2022, President Putin announced that Russia would only accept payments for Russian gas exports from "unfriendly countries" in rubles.

[130] This, along with several other actions to control capital flow, coinciding with soaring commodity prices led to the ruble rallying to a record high in May 2022 that economists feel is unlikely to last.

Capital control measures, including the mandatory FX sales for Russian exporters imposed by Moscow were also effective to support the value of the currency.