Russian rouble tumbles to record low

SINGAPORE: The Russian rouble tumbled to a record low against the dollar on Monday (Feb 28), after Western nations announced a harsh set of sanctions over the weekend to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, including sanctions on the country’s currency reserves.

The dollar/rouble rate was up 41.5 per cent at a record 119 per dollar, in Asian trading. So far this month, the dollar is up 53.77 per cent versus rouble.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military command to put nuclear-armed forces on high alert on Sunday, in response to Western reprisals for his war on Ukraine – the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two.

Russia’s central bank announced a slew of measures on Sunday to support domestic markets, as it scrambled to manage the fallout of the sanctions that will block some banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

The central bank said it would resume buying gold on the domestic market, launch a repurchase auction with no limits and ease restrictions on banks’ open foreign currency positions.

The currency had found some support last week from the first Russian central bank currency interventions since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

Analysts at Rabobank said the sanctions on currency reserves removed what little support the rouble had.

“Even the gold is not liquid if nobody can use FX in exchange for it. There will be a complete collapse in the rouble today…” they wrote.

Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank, said in a note on Sunday, “a collapse in the rouble appears inevitable on Monday morning”, and there was an increased risk of a Russian debt default as a result of the weekend developments.

“For the rouble whilst you might see it should sell off somewhat, I really doubt you are going to see people put on fresh bets to sell the rouble at these levels – so you might well see it weakening, but I don’t think you will see people transacting all that heavily,” said Peter Kinsella, London-based global head of FX strategy at UBP.

“There is a general lack of liquidity, and where you do see liquidity it is one sided, skewed to rouble sellers. It will be tricky, I can see rouble weakening quite severely – but just because it is weakening doesn’t mean it will be transacting heavily.”