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‘Hostile Activities’ (Who Wants Rubles?)
Vladimir Putin has an idea.
A week after making the transfer of hard currency illegal by decree, Putin signed a new order permitting debtors, both sovereign and corporate, to pay creditors in rubles. A debtor can establish, on behalf of a creditor, a specially designated account at a Russian bank, through which ruble-denominated payments are carried out at the official exchange rate. At that point, the payments are considered executed. Or at least by the Kremlin they are.
The problem, of cour
TBF, if you lent money to Russia post 2014, you knew what you were getting into. Zero pity.
Given Russia has had a tough go at its Blitzkrieg and it’s pretty easy for the teenage Russian soldiers to realize they were deployed to kill the civilians they were told they would be freeing from Nazis, the morale of the front-line forces must be decimated. To this, add the fact that they will hear from loved ones that the Rubles they were paid no longer buy anything back home.
I expect we’ll start reading accounts of Russian soldiers that give up when they encounter the slightest Ukranian armed resistance, and accounts of Russian soldiers killed by commanders for disobeying orders or attempting to escape.
It would behoove the U.S. and Europe to provide incentives for Russian troops to defect to the West and safeguard refugees. The more gear they steal, the better.