After facing a plethora of sanctions for invading Ukraine, Russia has now announced that “unfriendly countries” will have to pay for Russian fuel in Rubles. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced during a televised government meeting, “I have made a decision to implement in the shortest possible time a set of measures to switch payments for … our natural gas supplied to the so-called unfriendly countries to Russian rubles.”
The move will force western countries buying Russian oil and gas to buy Rubles which will raise the value of the currency.
Sanctions aimed at the Russian central bank effectively froze hundreds of billions of dollars of assets. Putin said that the freeze was proof that the dollar and euro “compromised themselves” and were unreliable.
The US has already banned oil and gas imports from Russia. Germany is mulling taking the same path.
