“I made the decision to implement a set of measures to switch to the payment in rubles of our gas delivered to hostile countries, and to give up in all the regulations, to the currencies that were compromised,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at a government meeting, quoted by the AFP agency.
The Russian president explained this decision by freezing the assets of Russia in the West because of his offensive in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin asked the Central Bank and the Government to “within a week” the new system which must be “clear, transparent” and implies “the acquisition of Russian of foreign exchange” within one week.
For his part, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov announced that Westerners have frozen some $ 300 billion in Russian reserves held abroad, qualifying these acts of theft.
European countries have, in fact, decided to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov by freezing their assets within the EU.
