Russian explorers stumble across one billion Soviet rubles in abandoned mine

A group of explorers in Russia discovered around a billion Soviet rubles in a swamp at an abandoned mine – but unfortunately, their haul is not worth anything.

The group from Saint Peterburg had heard rumours of large piles of cash dumped in old missile silos after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"We were told that there is an abandoned missile silos and that there could be hidden treasure – billions of Soviet rubles," said Anton Alekseev, a member of the group who hosts a YouTube channel.

"We wanted to check whether this is so."

The group set off across Russia's Vladimir region, more than 100 miles from Moscow.

After travelling for several hours, they came across a mine – and found thousands of bank notes of old Soviet-era money, bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin.

The site contains an estimated one billion rubles – worth around £13.5m ($17.5m) at current exchange rates. However, as they are no longer legal tender, this means they are worth nothing.

In 1991, after the dissolution of the USSR, the Soviet ruble was used in post-Soviet states in what was dubbed the "ruble zone", until it was replaced with the Russian ruble in 1993.