Russian newspapers responded with a mixture of shock and outrage on Thursday after the value of the ruble fell below 114 to the dollar on Wednesday, its worst performance since March 2022.
The Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a government-run paper, went with the headline “Panic Attack for Russia’s Currency Market” while Moscow daily Moskovsky Komsomolets reported: “The break has snapped on the ruble.” The translations were created by BBC News Russia expert Steve Rosenberg, who shared extracts from the newspapers in a video posted on social media platform X.
At its lowest point on Wednesday, the ruble nearly hit 113 to the dollar, prompting the Russian central bank to announce it would halt all foreign currency purchases for the rest of 2024 and sell Chinese yuan in a bid to prop it up. The move was partially successful and on Thursday the ruble rose to just under 108 to the dollar, though it remained significantly weaker than the 104 it recorded at the start of the week.
Russian business paper Kommersant told readers to “buckle up your rubles” adding, “On Wednesday 27 November news from the currency markets resembled reports from a war zone.”
The newspaper attributed this collapse “to a large degree” to “U.S. sanctions against Russian financial institutions, primarily Gazprombank, through which European countries make payments for Russian pipeline gas.”
On November 21, the U.S. Treasury Department announced fresh sanctions against dozens of Russian banks that had previously been used for international payment, including Gazprombank. According to The Financial Times, the U.S. had previously avoided sanctioning Gazprombank so European countries could continue paying for gas supplies from Russia.
The Nezavisimaya Gazeta, an influential Russian daily, reported that “since the beginning of November the ruble has fallen by more than 11 percent against the dollar.”
It said: “This is not only a substantial but also a spectacularly fast worsening of the ruble’s situation that becomes a statistically important inflationary factor with negative consequences for the domestic market.” However, the paper also noted that Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov was looking on the positive side, having argued the weakened ruble could boost the country’s exports.
RBK Daily, another Russian business newspaper, noted the country’s central bank “could employ its principle tool – a rise in interest rates.”
The Russian Central Bank raised its benchmark interest rates to 21 percent in October as it bids to control persistently high inflation, a result of massive government spending on the Ukraine war and wage increases in some sectors.
Russian inflation peaked at over nine percent over the summer according to Rosstat, Russia’s national statistics authority, though it fell back to 8.5 percent in October.
Newsweek contacted the Russian foreign ministry for comment by email.
The ruble saw its value collapse in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s 22 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, from a pre-war value of around 75 per dollar to nearly 134 per dollar on March 11. It then recovered substantially, before going into another slow decline. The ruble has been particularly badly hit since the start of September, culminating in its partial collapse on November 27.
Russia TV Pundits Baffled by Thanksgiving
During a recent edition of Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, a popular show on the state-owned Russia-1 television channel, one commentator reacted to President Biden pardoning two turkeys before Thanksgiving.
According to the Russian Media Monitor, he said: “I’m amazed by American cynicism – I recently watched something, Biden pardoning two turkeys…now count how many people you’ve killed in one year…you’re killing millions of people and pardoning two turkeys.”
In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that one million people had been killed or injured in the war since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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