Russia's ruble hits a 17-month low to the dollar as the Ukraine war bites | CNN Business

crickets

I'm not surprised there are no comments yet. The Putin apologists don't like it when factual numbers are posted. It's hard to ignore or argue against math.

In and out, 3 day special military operation.

Russia knows how to sink things

I'm surprised it hasn't sunk sooner

Usually they say it doesn't matter since Russia has allies all over the world and they and a rich trade between them.

probably due to Ukraine black sea blockade (? not really sure how to write it)

I think it's really funny that people are seeing this as "factual numbers" when exchange rates are literally market prices driven by currency buyers. The biggest currency buyers are all North Atlantic countries. So the idea that Russia's ruble has a low exchange rate against USD is not noteworthy in the slightest - what idiot would invest in stores of rubles when their countries are all engaged in economic sanctions that threaten to make those rubles useless to them.

China's Yuan is also at an all-time low against the USD and it's not in a hot war with a US proxy. What's that mean? Is it evidence that the sanctions against Russia are working? Is it evidence that Russia will collapse any day now? The imperial bootlickers will cherrypick literally anything that helps them buoy their sinking narrative so that they can sleep at night. The reality is that the foreign exchange rates are generally set by imperialists (see LIBOR scandal for just how much imperialists manipulate world financial markets and just how little they get prosecuted for it), and that a low RUB-USD rate matters for buying things in USD - which Russia can't really do because of Western sanctions. So what does it actually matter? The bigger question is what is the RUB exchange rate with its dominant trading partners. It's been falling against the CNY as well, which is somewhat troubling, but executing deals in yuan with yuan reserves means the exchange rate doesn't actually matter. Domestically, Russia's economy is growing with latest estimates expecting growth of 2.5%, because that's what happens in a war economy.

So to summarize, Russians are seeing purchases in USD become more expensive, but Russian's can't make many purchases in USD anymore because of sanctions, the domestic economy is improving and citizens of Russia are getting what they need from their trading partners, and the bigger concern is whether or not purchases from their trading partners are getting more expensive and will that hurt the domestic economy.

So far, we don't have much evidence of economic distress inside Russia.