Russia’s Digital Ruble Launch is a Masterclass in Tech Incompetence

The long-awaited arrival of the Digital Ruble has landed with all the grace of a brick. While the Central Bank of Russia promised a seamless experience, users trying to access the currency are instead greeted by a labyrinth of broken menus and missing features. Clients at VTB found that the service simply doesn't exist in their app, and support agents are offering indefinite delays as the solution. For the brave souls who manage to hunt down an alternative installation file from niche app stores—bypassing security warnings in the process—the reward is a hidden menu entry buried deep alongside public transit payment options.

Things aren't much better at Sber, where the sign-up process requires a digital gauntlet of Gosuslugi verifications, key generations, and security certificates. It's a bureaucratic obstacle course that often ends in an eight-hour wait for nothing. GigaChat, the bank’s own AI, summed up the user experience perfectly by suggesting that if you don't really need the account, you simply shouldn't open one. Meanwhile, Ozon Bank users are stuck behind an indefinite "technical works" screen that has persisted for over 16 hours.

This is the ultimate tech-bureaucracy hybrid: a state-mandated digital product that nobody asked for and that even its creators seem baffled by. When the "dopamine-colored" buttons fail to appear, the entire charade reveals that forcing a digital transformation is impossible when the underlying infrastructure is held together by hope and legacy server patches.