Russian Ruble reached four-year high against the US dollar and a seven-year high against the Euro on Friday.
Reaching 57.67 rubles against the 1 dollar shows the ruble’s strongest position since March 2018, as more European companies seemed to be complying with Vladimir Putin’s demand that they switch to paying in Russia’s Ruble for natural gas.
Last month, Gazprom stopped gas flows to Poland and Bulgaria for not paying in Rubles.
In Finland, flows on a main pipeline are going to be stopped in the early hours of Saturday after the country declined to pay in rubles.
“The exchange rate could go even stronger,” said Evgeny Koshelev at Rosbank.
“The overhang of hard currency liquidity can’t be absorbed by internal means — banks are less and less interested since there’s no demand, the population doesn’t have any way of using it.”
As reported recently, the Russian currency has become the world’s best-performing currency for this year, regardless of a sharp drop in April, sparked by sanctions against Russia over Ukraine-Russia war.
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