The Moscow Stock Exchange prohibits trading in dollars and euros. Response to Western sanctions

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Commenting on the new round of US sanctions announced yesterday, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, confirmed that “Russia will not leave such aggressive actions without a response.” But in the meantime it is Moscow that is forced to take action: in the list of 30 individuals and 200 organizations included in the US Treasury’s “blacklist”, there is also the Moscow Stock Exchange, the first in the country. On the Russian National Day, the Central Bank immediately announced that starting today, June 13, “exchanges and transactions in dollars and euros are suspended, due to the imposition of restrictive measures by the United States.”

A Russian bank announced that it will now rely on “over-the-counter” trading to determine the official exchange rate of the ruble with the euro and the dollar, and reassured bank deposit holders: Russian banks will continue to carry out purchases and sales in the two currencies. The Central Bank explained that “all funds in dollars and euros in the accounts and deposits of citizens and companies are safe.”

Eve To the G7, which will study how to allocate it to Ukraine Due to the revenues of the Russian Central Bank’s frozen reserves in Europe and the United States, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained yesterday that the new round of sanctions aims to complicate the implementation of transactions that exploit the remaining channels in Moscow for the sale of raw materials and the storage of materials and equipment. “We are raising the level of risk borne by financial institutions dealing with the Russian war economy, reducing Moscow’s ability to access foreign technologies, equipment, software and IT services,” Yellen said.

Anticipating the possibility that sanctions will make stock exchange operations on the stock exchange technically impossible, Central Bank President Elvira Nabiullina explained in December that this possibility will not have an undue impact on the ruble rate: more than half of ruble currency exchange operations take place outside the official market. Moreover, the dollar no longer plays the role it played before in the Russian currency market: if at the beginning of 2022, before the war, dollar trades in rubles included 78% of transactions on the Moscow Stock Exchange, this percentage has decreased to 78% of transactions in Moscow Stock Exchange. 32% at the end of last year. In favor of the Chinese yuan.

Following the commitments made at the Ukraine Reconstruction Conference that concluded yesterday in Berlin, and in anticipation of the G7 commitments starting today in Puglia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received another good news yesterday during Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to Budapest. Secretary General of NATO. Which obtained from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a commitment not to obstruct future NATO decisions in support of Ukraine, “even though – as Orban said at the press conference – they differ from our rational assessment of the situation.” Orban, the leader of the European country most closely aligned with Russia, said he had received assurances from Stoltenberg that Hungary could continue to refuse to send weapons, let alone men, to Ukraine.