The latest warning to foreign bondholders ratchets up the chances the country will default on its debt for the first time since the Russian financial crisis in 1998, as its financial system comes under heavy strain from the measures western governments have taken following the invasion.

“We need to pay for critical imports. Food, medicine, a whole array of other vital goods,” Siluanov told a state television interviewer. “But the debts we need to pay to the countries that have been unfriendly to the Russian Federation and have limited our use of foreign currency reserves — we will pay off our debt to these countries in the rouble equivalent,” he said.

Siluanov said that almost half of Russia’s $643bn foreign reserves had been hit by the sanctions, but did not disclose the denominations and jurisdictions where Russia holds other currencies.