However, when it comes to the threat of crisis, it is believed that the batch of bad business loans will pose the biggest problems for the Kremlin.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has covered the costs of its war largely by injecting massive amounts of cash into Russian companies through its banks.

This fueled economic growth and created an illusion of Russian resilience, says Craig Kennedy, of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies.

In particular, the Kremlin significantly watered down rules and credit checks for defence-sector lending, says Kennedy, who was formerly vice chairman at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

“This has created a large pool of opaque, unmeasured and poorly managed default risk at the heart of the Russian banking system,” he warns in his Substack, Navigating Russia.

As of December, banks’ total loans to defence companies exceeded $200bn (£148bn), more than 23pc of banks’ corporate loan books. And this is a sector that has a notoriously bad credit history.

PSB’s losses reflect “deep troubles in the Russian military industrial sector”, says Milov.

But the vulnerabilities extend far beyond the defence sector, as the majority of businesses in Russia are in a painful downturn.

Putin has revealed that Russian GDP contracted by 1.8pc in January and February.

Three quarters of Russia’s industries are either underwater or flatlining, says Milov, with the coal, steel, paper and construction sectors all grappling with crises.

“You can imagine that most of the sectors of the economy are very weak in servicing their debts,” he says.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin is anxious.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5860225&forum_id=2Reputation#49840842)