Russians are concerned above all with a swift end to "military action," German Gref, chief executive of Russia's largest state-controlled lender Sberbank, said, state media RBC reported on July 1.

The remarks are notable given how rarely senior Russian executives comment publicly on the war in Ukraine, with the full-scale invasion increasingly weighing on the economy through Ukrainian drone strikes, a fuel crisis and a population fleeing into cash.

Sberbank first reports the ticker SBER on the Moscow Exchange.

"I think we are all concerned about the same thing. I do not think there is a single person in the country who is concerned about anything other than the swift end of the military action. That is obvious," Gref said during the shareholder meeting, as cited by RBC.

This week Sberbank approved a record dividend of RUB850.2bn ($10.9bn), equivalent to 50% of the bank's IFRS net profit for 2025. The payout marks 37.64 rubles per share, following a record annual profit of 1.69 trillion rubles, an 8.4% increase from the previous year. 

Sberbank is a significant source of budget revenue for the Russian government, which controls 50% plus one share through the National Wealth Fund. The bank's share to the state will total 425 billion rubles this year. 

At the same meeting, Gref renewed his call for the central bank to cut its key interest rate. He argued that policymakers had poured too much cold water on the economy in their fight against inflation driven by military spending. 

Russia's central bank raised its key rate to a two-decade high of 21% in late 2024 as inflation surged, before easing borrowing costs to 14.25% earlier this month. The regulator has warned that a widening budget deficit and growing problems in the domestic fuel market may force it to keep rates elevated for longer.