Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for 18 months with no end in sight. Russians have been feeling the financial squeeze for quite some time while Putin has been whisking around the nation in his cosmetology train and presumably ducking into his pickle hideout because a leader must keep his priorities in sight. The Russian ruble, however, is finally showing enough signs of no life that Putin must be concerned.
The Kremlin attempted, however, to blame the Russia’s central bank for the crumbling currency, which recently hit another wartime low in comparison to the U.S. dollar. The effects of Putin’s war on the economy are multifold, so the issue is a complex one, and a hacker even let loose with a message that Putin surely did not love. Al Jazeera now reports that the central bank has taken drastic measures in an attempt to save the ruble:
Russia’s central bank has hiked its key interest rate by 350 basis points to 12 percent, an emergency move to try and halt the rouble’s recent slide after a public call from the Kremlin for tighter monetary policy.
The extraordinary rate meeting came on Tuesday after the rouble plummeted past the 100 threshold against the US dollar on Monday, dragged down by the effects of Western sanctions on Russia’s balance of trade and as military spending soars.
Additionally, there has been an update on Putin’s increasingly tight friendship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Putin recently didn’t seem to care how bad this looks, perhaps because he’s scoring rockets from his new BFF. Whatever the case, the two are now exchanging letters as detailed in North Korean state media, via Reuters:
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged letters on Tuesday pledging to develop their ties into what Kim called a “long-standing strategic relationship,” Pyongyang’s state media KCNA said….
In his letter to Putin, Kim said the two countries’ friendship was forged in World War II with victory over Japan and is now “fully demonstrating their invincibility and might in the struggle to smash the imperialists’ arbitrary practices and hegemony,” KCNA said.
Man, Trump is gonna be so jealous after he had to fork over those North Korean “love letters” from yesteryear.
(Via Al Jazeera & Reuters)