Approx. A queue of 30 people lined up in front of the exchange office on ul. Pushkin near Moscow Railway Station. The Russians had to wait about 30 minutes to get inside. According to Russian media, it was the only place where such a large queue was recorded on Friday.
“The exchange office sells dollars for 80.5 rubles apiece, and euros for 88 rubles. When someone buys more than 200 pieces at a time, the exchange rate increases by 20 kopecks,” the local portal fontanka.ru reported.
The situation was commented on by an adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs. “The dollar exchange rate has skyrocketed in Russia over the past few days. People are lining up near currency exchange points,” wrote Anton Herashchenko.
The rest of the article is below the video:
On Thursday, the exchange rate was 81.6 rubles, which is the lowest level of the currency since April 2022. — reports Business Insider.
Analysts quoted by Bloomberg indicate two reasons for the recent weakening of the ruble. First of all, under international pressure, Austrian Raiffeisen, the last large Western bank still present in the Russian market, has recently reduced its activity on the Russian market. The changes introduced by him regarding the rules of dollar transfers to the Russian market may reduce the liquidity in dollars on this market.
Secondly, “Kommersant” wrote that Vladimir Putin allegedly agreed that Shell could transfer outside Russia the amounts it obtained from the sale of its shares in oil projects in Sakhalin, Russia. It’s close to 100 billion rubles, but Shell first needs to convert these rubles into about $1.2 billion to do so. Such a big deal in a market that hasn’t been very liquid for months, and even the anticipation behind this deal immediately weakens the rublewhich at the moment also works to the detriment of Shell.
In the evaluation Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov the ruble exchange rate is influenced by the “situation in the world”. He assured that soon there will be “strengthening due to increase in prices of energy carriers”. As announced, The ruble is supposed to have a “trend to strengthen” now.
Source: Twitter, Business Insider, fontanka.ru
