Ruble Crash Causes Scandal In Russian Federation: Authorities Deceive Russians
- 15.08.2023, 11:01
Russian residents were told about the weakening euro and dollar.
The dollar exchange rate on the Russian Moscow Exchange rose above 101 rubles on Monday, while the euro crossed the bar at 110 Russian rubles for the first time since March 2022. The fall of the ruble does not fit well with the forecasts that pro-government financiers and officials have been giving since 2014. "Agency" collected some statements that misled Russians about the prospects of the Russian currency.
Less than two months ago, on June 18, when the dollar was already worth more than 84 rubles, VTB Chairman Andrei Kostin advised Russians to keep their money in rubles. "It's very dangerous to keep [savings] in Western currencies today, and banks don't accept this currency anymore, so I think you can keep it in rubles," he said. He gave the same advice in November 2019, when the dollar was slightly above 63 rubles.
In April, when the dollar cost about 81 rubles, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that thanks to the increase in energy prices, the ruble exchange rate "will have a tendency to strengthen." Since then, the ruble has been weakening almost non-stop.
In December 2022, when the ruble began to fall after strengthening in the middle of the year, the advice to Russians was given by Yury Yudenkov, professor of the department of "Finance, Monetary Circulation and Credit" of the Faculty of Finance and Banking of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. He said that it is not worth "running to buy dollars and euros, fearing the growth to one hundred roubles".
The Russian president also made a number of statements about the state of the Russian currency. After the ruble strengthened in May 2022 after collapsing in February and March Vladimir Putin said that "the dollar is known to be shrinking."
"Keep your savings in rubles!", Dmitry Medvedev wrote in July 2022, speculating about the "rotten euro" that has levelled off against the dollar.
The same July, Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote about five reasons "why the dollar is increasingly losing ground."
At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, when the ruble was falling to record levels, there were also calls not to invest in the currency. For example, Nikolai Arefiev, first deputy chairman of the State Duma's economic policy committee, said that "we don't need dollars today." "Why do we need this dollar? It is expensive today, and tomorrow it will definitely be cheap. It will not grow indefinitely," he said.
This rhetoric was also heard during the 2014 crisis after the annexation of Crimea. Then the director of the Centre for Macroeconomic Research (CMR) of Sberbank Yulia Tseplyayeva recommended, for example, to refrain from "unnecessary movements towards investments in the dollar". "I will not buy dollars at such a rate," she said in October 2014, when the dollar cost about 42 rubles.