The digital ruble is Russia’s central-bank digital currency: a digital form of the national ruble issued on the Bank of Russia’s platform, alongside cash and ordinary bank-account money. It is not a cryptocurrency or a privately issued stablecoin. The supplied CoinTelegraph report says employees who opted in opened platform accounts and received their first digital-ruble salaries on October 1 (CoinTelegraph).
The significance is practical but limited: the reported payment takes the CBDC into a real government payroll, beyond demonstrations or trials, and shows that an opt-in workflow was used for at least some staff. It is an operational milestone, not evidence by itself of broad employee adoption or routine nationwide use. The report and supplied posts give no employee count, payment total, or evidence of wider uptake.