Way to try and deflect, Scumbag. Putin talked shit, Obama bitched slapped him and put a cigar out in his food with those sanctions, leaving conservatives whose lips were glued to Putin's jock-and YOU-looking like complete idiots. And it's gonna get worse...ointer:Slapping-silly90))cockingasnook()azzkick(&^Loser!@#0:hahahahahkth)(&^
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/opinion/ghitis-putin-ruble/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
(CNN) -- What would you do if you were Vladimir Putin? What would you do if you were a Russian citizen?
Russia's economic problems -- slowly incubating in recent months -- are about to get a lot worse. And that should make all of us nervous.
The stomach-turning free fall of the ruble, the Russian currency, revealed the impending crisis. It may seem like a matter of economics, but at this level it is about politics, and when it comes to Putin, politics does not stop at the Russian border.
Frida Ghitis
Putin will try to blame Russia's problems on the West. He will work to bolster support at home, rally the public by making Russians feel besieged by the outside world, mostly by the United States and its NATO allies. That could end up creating even more dangerous tensions between Moscow and Washington, between Russia and the West. And Putin has shown he is not afraid of using every instrument of power, including his military forces, to achieve his goals.
The walls are closing in on Putin's Russia. The spectacular collapse in global oil prices has led to an even more dramatic crumbling of the Russian currency, all of it coming at the same time as economic sanctions the West had imposed after Putin's forces captured Crimea, legally part of Ukraine, and stoked a separatist war between pro-Russian Ukrainians and the central government in Kiev.
Richard Haass on Putin's next move
Russia flexes its air muscle
Russia's $730 billion war machine
Putin takes aim at West in defiant speech
In his annual speech to the nation this month, Putin told Russians that the West is determined to keep Russia from becoming strong, that Ukraine was not the real reason for the sanctions. "If none of that (Ukraine) had ever happened," he said, "they would have come up with some other excuse to try to contain Russia's growing capabilities." He described it as a historical pattern the West repeats "whenever someone thinks that Russia has become too strong or independent."
For now, the strategy, which includes suppressing any critical media and quieting critics, is working. Polls show Putin's approval ratings at stratospheric levels. But that was before the price of oil collapsed and the ruble went into a downward spiral.
Even if he can keep strong popular support, Putin has to worry most of all about keeping happy the oligarchs, the wealthy Russians who back him in exchange for continued prosperity. Economic sanctions and a shrinking economy will not make them happy.
The severity of the current crisis became apparent by Tuesday. The ruble had lost nearly 20% in just one day. So the Central Bank, Russia's version of the Federal Reserve, held an emergency meeting and raised interest rates to 17% from 10.5%.
The move was meant to strengthen the ruble, to keep people from selling. Wealthy Russians have taken more than $125 billion out of the country, and slashed oil earnings mean there are less export earnings to convert into rubles.
The rate hike hasn't appeared to work. But even if it does, that neck-snapping hike will make it hard for the economy to breathe. Once again, the Russia people will go through wrenching economic hardship because their leaders are following foolish, grandiose policies.
Only recently authorities had predicted a mild recession for next year. That is all changing now. Instead of the original government forecast of a 0.8% decline, the Central Bank said that if oil stays under $60 a barrel, the economy could contract more than 4.5%. That is a deep and painful recession.
Living standards are now sure to slide.
For Putin, strong oil and gas export earnings have provided political power. Popularity came from rising living standards. It was less than a year ago when, flush with cash, Putin staged his triumphant Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. He spent $50 billion to dazzle the world and show the Russia people that under his leadership Russia was a global power. But before the Olympic flame flickered out fires were already raging in Ukraine. Then came the invasion of Crimea, economic sanctions, and now this, the most painful cut of oil.
Sanctions, which were meant to loosen Putin's grip on eastern Ukraine, are now not the main problem for the Russian leader. If he relented to Western demands, he would still have a recession on his hands.
Putin still loved at home
A cornered Putin could prove dangerous, as Russia's neighbors know well.
Sweden's defense minister went on TV a few days ago to announce new military readiness measures in response to Russia's military maneuvers.
The Baltic states, whose NATO membership commits the United States and others to intervene in their defense, worry Russia may make a move in their territory. Russian agents captured an Estonian official a few months ago. The Baltics -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- have fresh memories of being annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940.
Moscow's military muscle-flexing has not been limited to border states. Britain's Royal Air Force has intercepted several Russian bombers as they neared UK airspace. Norway, too, has intercepted Russian bombers. NATO says it has intercepted more than 100 Russian aircraft since the crisis over Ukraine started.
Would Putin start a new military crisis to fuel nationalistic fervor and thus protect himself from the backlash of economic troubles at home?
Recent rhetoric indicates that would be a preferred tactic. But polls show the Russian people are wavering. Russian support for a military presence in Ukraine has dropped from 74% to 23%, according to The Economist.
That's the first sign of a majority of Russians doubting, if not in any way turning against their President for now.
Putin has no good, easy choices. That should give the rest of the world reason to be nervous.
Fuck these guys should move to Russia. Fuck they were gloating when they thought Putin was getting over on Obama but it turns out it's an ass whooping. The worst part is that guys like Russ are still rooting against Obama for Putin. Only comeback is the 18 trillion debt. Keep rooting for Putin and Russia losers
huh? civil war? cool. Once again, Russia, GET YOUR MILITARY OUT OF UKRAINE,
. quick question-- did Putin REALLY think he was going to outsmart the west ?
He ignored advisors, pleas from Gardar , Medvedev, Surkov to diversify Russia's economy. HE lived through 1992-- ALLOWED country to be in harm's way to RE-LIVE IT?!?!!?!?!? a colossal failureyou once spoke of the Grandmasters, neverbend . Ironically, one of them did have it right. Here's Kasporov : "Putin is playing poker while the world is playing chess'
Russia has an attractive Debt-to GDP ratio largely as a result of pressing the re-set button,
. They defaulted on debt in 1998....shame...shame..... In addition state owned corporations (Gazprom, Rosneft, Transneft) added debt to their corporate balance sheets some of which used is for social programs/projects effectively decreasing amt of govt borrowingRussia has an attractive Debt-to GDP ratio largely as a result of pressing the re-set button,
Anywhere close to 18 Trillion, just saying
Like the guy said in "Inglorious Bastards," we have a BINGO!!!Bowling^&%cheersgif
k::banger::thumbsup2:
Finchy, well done. You posted a relevant article that agreed with the point you were making. I actually even agree with you on this one, also. Proud of your progress. Keep it up. 2015 might be your best year yet.
You don't get it dude, not rooting for Putin. There is no ass whooping going on that can be connected to Obama. Are you aware that Putin is consorting with North Korea and China as we speak. Duh (intellectual my ass). Obama is not a leader unless you count leading a country into debt being a leader. Do you look both ways before you cross the street or do you wait for Obama to tell you when to cross. Good grief dude, get with the program. No body here is rooting for Putin but he like all other national leaders have no respect for Obama and are taking advantage of Obama's inability to lead. Isis is just a JV. Hello
[h=2]A Dictator’s Best Friend[/h]Column: Obama rescues tyrants from Havana to Damascus
EMAIL
BY: Matthew Continetti
December 19, 2014 5:00 am
“It’s a sad day for freedom,” Marco Rubio told Bret Baier after President Obama announced he would normalize relations with Cuba. Not a sad day, senator: a sad year.
If there was a theme to 2014, it was Obama’s persistence in bailing out dictators and theocrats from political scrapes and economic hardships, his tenacity in pursuit of engagement with America’s adversaries no matter the cost to our strength, principles, credibility, or alliances.
In this president the thugs in Havana and Caracas, Damascus and Tehran, Moscow and Naypyidaw and Beijing have no better friend. For these bullies, these evildoers, these millenarians and sectarians, Barack Obama is more than a dupe. He is an insurance policy.
Cuba is but the latest example of this president’s failing to exercise leverage in the pursuit of American strength and security and prestige. Here are the Castro brothers, decrepit and spent, their revolution a joke, their economy in peril thanks to the collapse in oil prices brought on by a strong dollar and increased U.S. supply.
The China option—foreign direct investment from America—is Raul and Fidel’s only play to sustain power over the society they have impoverished. And Obama says yes, yes to everything: an embassy, an ambassador, diplomatic relations, travel and exchange, status among nations, removal from the list of state sponsors of terror, and a serious opportunity to lessen the embargo that has kept the dictators caged for decades.
In return, the Castro brothers give up … well, what? Alan Gross, a political prisoner and persecuted religious minority who shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place? A second man who has been in captivity for decades? Thin gruel.
No promise of elections, no declaration of religious freedom, no demilitarization, no opening up of Cuban prisons to international inspection. Not even a pledge that salaries from U.S. companies operating in Cuba at indentured-servitude rates—the minimum wage is $19 a month—will be paid directly to employees rather than passed through the bloated, corrupt, suffocating state.
This isn’t giving away the store. This is giving away the shopping mall, town center, enterprise zone. And it is entirely in character with President Obama’s foreign policy.
In the late summer of 2013 Bashar Assad was caught using chemical weapons against his own people. The president and his secretary of state decried this violation of international norms and pledged, in televised addresses, to punish the Syrian tyrant for wanton slaughter and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The application of deadly force against Assad’s air force and military installations would cripple the regime and hasten the end of a civil war that has taken the lives of some 200,000 Syrians. But suddenly Obama reversed course. He signed on to a Russian proposal to prevent a military strike in exchange for Assad’s “giving up” his barbaric tools.
Today Bashar Assad remains in power, his opposition is divided, he has entered into an alliance of convenience with the medieval Islamic State that governs from Raqaa to Mosul. The weapons? Earlier this month the U.S. government—Barack Obama’s government—accused Syria of ongoing “systematic use” of chemical arms. I repeat: ongoing.
Not only has Obama failed to achieve his stated aims of removing Assad and ending the WMD threat. The situation is more dangerous than it was a year ago because the Islamic State’s menagerie of Saddam loyalists and itinerant holy warriors is securing ground from which to launch attacks on targets throughout the world. Baathist dictators, chemical agents, refugees, Islamic armies are the consequence of this president’s curious mixture of false promises and aggrieved passivity.
Barack Obama threw the Castros a lifeline, rescued Assad. But these monsters are not even the most dangerous of the despots he has enabled. An Iranian nuke would change the strategic equation of the Middle East and thus the world. Not only would Israel be threatened, so would America because of Iran’s past use of terrorist proxies and increasingly sophisticated missile tech. And the threat would increase as Sunni and Turkic nations developed or bought WMD to deter the Persian hegemon.
By the end of last year the economic sanctions passed by Congress over the Obama administration’s objections, as well as the shale energy revolution, had brought the Iranian economy to the brink of collapse. The moment had arrived to rally the West. Demonstrate a credible threat of force—perhaps by crippling Assad’s air defenses—and force the Iranians into a defensive posture.
What did Obama do? He agreed to lift sanctions on Iran, infusing the theocratic economy with billions of dollars, in exchange for entering direct negotiations and a few paltry concessions. The centrifuges kept spinning, Iran cheated on the terms of this incredibly generous interim agreement, Iranian missile development, international terrorism, support for radical Islam, and human rights abuses went on.
Obama said U.S. advocates of sanctions were warmongers. His underlings called Israel’s prime minister a chickenshit. And when the interim deal reached its expiration date, when Iran’s undeterred commitment to achieving nuclear status was obvious to all, when the ayatollah was tweeting his plan to eliminate Israel from the earth, Obama extended the deal and economic relief just so he would not be exposed as a failure.
Not even Iran, however, has invaded its neighbors as unabashedly and aggressively as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which in less than eight years has annexed parts of Georgia and a critical region of Ukraine. Some 4,300 people have been killed since Putin’s undeclared invasion of eastern Ukraine last spring, not counting the hundreds who died when a pro-Russian missile battery destroyed a civilian airliner.
Obama’s response has been limited to sanctions on Putin and his inner circle. He has not provided the heavy arms necessary to roll back Russian advances in the east, nor has he launched a new Marshall Plan to sustain the economy of free Ukraine until Putin’s illegal war comes to an end. Obama’s idea of military aid is to send MREs.
This week Putin reached an impasse. Changes in the global economy—a strengthening America, plunging commodity prices, spooked foreign investors–have provoked the worst crisis in Russia since the late 1990s. The sanctions Obama has already agreed to will worsen the pain.
This is a point of maximum leverage. A public and generous commitment of financial and military aid to Ukraine, an assertion of U.S. military and ideological might, could expel the Russians from the east and inspire the democratic opposition in Moscow. What will Obama do?
Two words: Blow it. The president has agreed to sign a tough sanctions bill passed unanimously by Congress only because it contains loopholes that will allow him to shirk its harshest and most effective provisions. I do not hear him calling for increased hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, including on federal lands, I have missed his pledge to restore America’s military and rebuild a force to deter the bear, I am betting he won’t expand natural gas exports, or increase the number of military advisers in Kiev, or expel Russia from the G8. Opportunity missed.
Like the Castros, Assad, and the mullahs, Putin is in danger, his grip tenuous, his options narrowing. Lucky for him, lucky for the other bad guys, Putin can count on the American president to bail him out. Forget about standing up for a U.S.-led international order: Obama won’t even respond to North Korea’s act of war against the United States, its cyber-attack on a U.S. film studio that succeeded in limiting free speech from thousands of miles away. And Obama says he’s against bullying!
“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,” wrote Yeats, “And say my glory was I had such friends.” Dictators don’t have many friends. But they have Barack Obama.
AP
BY: Matthew Continetti
December 19, 2014 5:00 am
“It’s a sad day for freedom,” Marco Rubio told Bret Baier after President Obama announced he would normalize relations with Cuba. Not a sad day, senator: a sad year.
If there was a theme to 2014, it was Obama’s persistence in bailing out dictators and theocrats from political scrapes and economic hardships, his tenacity in pursuit of engagement with America’s adversaries no matter the cost to our strength, principles, credibility, or alliances.
In this president the thugs in Havana and Caracas, Damascus and Tehran, Moscow and Naypyidaw and Beijing have no better friend. For these bullies, these evildoers, these millenarians and sectarians, Barack Obama is more than a dupe. He is an insurance policy.
Cuba is but the latest example of this president’s failing to exercise leverage in the pursuit of American strength and security and prestige. Here are the Castro brothers, decrepit and spent, their revolution a joke, their economy in peril thanks to the collapse in oil prices brought on by a strong dollar and increased U.S. supply.
The China option—foreign direct investment from America—is Raul and Fidel’s only play to sustain power over the society they have impoverished. And Obama says yes, yes to everything: an embassy, an ambassador, diplomatic relations, travel and exchange, status among nations, removal from the list of state sponsors of terror, and a serious opportunity to lessen the embargo that has kept the dictators caged for decades.
In return, the Castro brothers give up … well, what? Alan Gross, a political prisoner and persecuted religious minority who shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place? A second man who has been in captivity for decades? Thin gruel.
No promise of elections, no declaration of religious freedom, no demilitarization, no opening up of Cuban prisons to international inspection. Not even a pledge that salaries from U.S. companies operating in Cuba at indentured-servitude rates—the minimum wage is $19 a month—will be paid directly to employees rather than passed through the bloated, corrupt, suffocating state.
This isn’t giving away the store. This is giving away the shopping mall, town center, enterprise zone. And it is entirely in character with President Obama’s foreign policy.
In the late summer of 2013 Bashar Assad was caught using chemical weapons against his own people. The president and his secretary of state decried this violation of international norms and pledged, in televised addresses, to punish the Syrian tyrant for wanton slaughter and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The application of deadly force against Assad’s air force and military installations would cripple the regime and hasten the end of a civil war that has taken the lives of some 200,000 Syrians. But suddenly Obama reversed course. He signed on to a Russian proposal to prevent a military strike in exchange for Assad’s “giving up” his barbaric tools.
Today Bashar Assad remains in power, his opposition is divided, he has entered into an alliance of convenience with the medieval Islamic State that governs from Raqaa to Mosul. The weapons? Earlier this month the U.S. government—Barack Obama’s government—accused Syria of ongoing “systematic use” of chemical arms. I repeat: ongoing.
Not only has Obama failed to achieve his stated aims of removing Assad and ending the WMD threat. The situation is more dangerous than it was a year ago because the Islamic State’s menagerie of Saddam loyalists and itinerant holy warriors is securing ground from which to launch attacks on targets throughout the world. Baathist dictators, chemical agents, refugees, Islamic armies are the consequence of this president’s curious mixture of false promises and aggrieved passivity.
Barack Obama threw the Castros a lifeline, rescued Assad. But these monsters are not even the most dangerous of the despots he has enabled. An Iranian nuke would change the strategic equation of the Middle East and thus the world. Not only would Israel be threatened, so would America because of Iran’s past use of terrorist proxies and increasingly sophisticated missile tech. And the threat would increase as Sunni and Turkic nations developed or bought WMD to deter the Persian hegemon.
By the end of last year the economic sanctions passed by Congress over the Obama administration’s objections, as well as the shale energy revolution, had brought the Iranian economy to the brink of collapse. The moment had arrived to rally the West. Demonstrate a credible threat of force—perhaps by crippling Assad’s air defenses—and force the Iranians into a defensive posture.
What did Obama do? He agreed to lift sanctions on Iran, infusing the theocratic economy with billions of dollars, in exchange for entering direct negotiations and a few paltry concessions. The centrifuges kept spinning, Iran cheated on the terms of this incredibly generous interim agreement, Iranian missile development, international terrorism, support for radical Islam, and human rights abuses went on.
Obama said U.S. advocates of sanctions were warmongers. His underlings called Israel’s prime minister a chickenshit. And when the interim deal reached its expiration date, when Iran’s undeterred commitment to achieving nuclear status was obvious to all, when the ayatollah was tweeting his plan to eliminate Israel from the earth, Obama extended the deal and economic relief just so he would not be exposed as a failure.
Not even Iran, however, has invaded its neighbors as unabashedly and aggressively as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which in less than eight years has annexed parts of Georgia and a critical region of Ukraine. Some 4,300 people have been killed since Putin’s undeclared invasion of eastern Ukraine last spring, not counting the hundreds who died when a pro-Russian missile battery destroyed a civilian airliner.
Obama’s response has been limited to sanctions on Putin and his inner circle. He has not provided the heavy arms necessary to roll back Russian advances in the east, nor has he launched a new Marshall Plan to sustain the economy of free Ukraine until Putin’s illegal war comes to an end. Obama’s idea of military aid is to send MREs.
This week Putin reached an impasse. Changes in the global economy—a strengthening America, plunging commodity prices, spooked foreign investors–have provoked the worst crisis in Russia since the late 1990s. The sanctions Obama has already agreed to will worsen the pain.
This is a point of maximum leverage. A public and generous commitment of financial and military aid to Ukraine, an assertion of U.S. military and ideological might, could expel the Russians from the east and inspire the democratic opposition in Moscow. What will Obama do?
Two words: Blow it. The president has agreed to sign a tough sanctions bill passed unanimously by Congress only because it contains loopholes that will allow him to shirk its harshest and most effective provisions. I do not hear him calling for increased hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, including on federal lands, I have missed his pledge to restore America’s military and rebuild a force to deter the bear, I am betting he won’t expand natural gas exports, or increase the number of military advisers in Kiev, or expel Russia from the G8. Opportunity missed.
Like the Castros, Assad, and the mullahs, Putin is in danger, his grip tenuous, his options narrowing. Lucky for him, lucky for the other bad guys, Putin can count on the American president to bail him out. Forget about standing up for a U.S.-led international order: Obama won’t even respond to North Korea’s act of war against the United States, its cyber-attack on a U.S. film studio that succeeded in limiting free speech from thousands of miles away. And Obama says he’s against bullying!
“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,” wrote Yeats, “And say my glory was I had such friends.” Dictators don’t have many friends. But they have Barack Obama.
he's got to turn somewhere. China has played brilliantly. Quietly doing their thing, 'let the World see our power . Never using force'. Putin came TO THEM to close the oil pipeline deal , they were waiting with massive leverage. And possibly ,now, once again?
. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-12-19/did-china-float-a-bailout-offer-for-crisis-hit-russia
China offered enhanced economic ties with Russia at a regional summit this week as its northern neighbor struggled to contain a currency crisis.
“To help counteract an economic slowdown, China is ready to provide financial aid to develop cooperation,” Premier Li Keqiang said at a Dec. 15 gathering in Astana, Kazakhstan. While the remark applied to any of the five other nations represented at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization group, it was directed at Russia, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named as the plans weren’t public.
Any rescue package for Russia would give China the opportunity of exercising the kind of great-power leadership the U.S. has demonstrated for a century -- sustaining other economies with its superior financial resources. President Xi Jinping last month called for China to adopt “big-country diplomacy” as he laid out goals for elevating his nation’s status.
“If the Kremlin decides to seek assistance from Beijing, it’s very unlikely for the Xi leadership to turn it down,” said Cheng Yijun, senior researcher with the Institute of Russian, Eastern European, Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. “This would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate China is a friend indeed, and also its big power status
Putin gave no indication yesterday he was entertaining the idea of asking for Chinese help
So in effect Obama followers want to give him credit for Putin's dilemma but will not acknowledge that things like this unite the socialistic nations. This strengthens ties among nations who know that Obama is weak and on a mission to lower the status of the United States on a world wide basis. Obama is the only guy I have ever seen who could lose at shadow boxing. lol
:lolBIG:
Good luck with that.
Vladimir Putin invites Kim Jong-un to Moscow
North Korea’s leader may travel to Russia to mark the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany on 9 May as mark of closer relations
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/vladimir-putin-invites-north-korea-kim-jong-un-moscow
[h=1]Arsenal's Alisher Usmanov loses $809m in 48 hours, Chelsea's Abramovich loses $450m[/h][h=2]Two of the Premier League's wealthiest owners have lost huge sums this week.[/h]View gallery
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Alisher Usmanov chats with Roman Abramovich (Reuters)
Two of the Premier League's wealthiest owners have lost huge sums this week as a result of a decrease in value of the Russian ruble.
Alisher Usmanov, who owns over 30 per cent of Arsenal and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich have lost a combined $1.3 billion over the past few days.
According to research by Vanity Fair using Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, Usmanov lost an eye-watering $809 million (£505m) in the space of just 48 hours.
Meanwhile, Abramovich also lost $450 million (£281m) as a result of the financial meltdown.
Still, the pair's net worth remains truly staggering, so they may not be missing the money too badly.
Usmanov's net worth, after the slide, remains an incredible $13.4 billion (£8.4 billion).
Equally, Abramovich still has a very handsome $12.8 billion (£7.9 billion) to his name.
According to Vanity Fair, 15 oligarchs and tycoons - headed by Usmanov and Abramovich - lost a collective $8.65 billion (£5.4 billion) in the space of 48 hours.
The value of Russia's currency has dropped by 60 per cent since January.
The country's central bank recently responded by raising the short-term interest rate from 10.5 per cent to 17 per cent.
The exchange rate between the Russian ruble and British pounds as a result of the fall was 95.16 rubles to £1.
So, sympathy for Usmanov and Abramovich, anyone?
View gallery
.
Roman Abramovich sits next to his wife (Getty)
.
Two of the Premier League's wealthiest owners have lost huge sums this week as a result of a decrease in value of the Russian ruble.
Alisher Usmanov, who owns over 30 per cent of Arsenal and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich have lost a combined $1.3 billion over the past few days.
According to research by Vanity Fair using Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, Usmanov lost an eye-watering $809 million (£505m) in the space of just 48 hours.
Meanwhile, Abramovich also lost $450 million (£281m) as a result of the financial meltdown.
Still, the pair's net worth remains truly staggering, so they may not be missing the money too badly.
Usmanov's net worth, after the slide, remains an incredible $13.4 billion (£8.4 billion).
Equally, Abramovich still has a very handsome $12.8 billion (£7.9 billion) to his name.
According to Vanity Fair, 15 oligarchs and tycoons - headed by Usmanov and Abramovich - lost a collective $8.65 billion (£5.4 billion) in the space of 48 hours.
The value of Russia's currency has dropped by 60 per cent since January.
The country's central bank recently responded by raising the short-term interest rate from 10.5 per cent to 17 per cent.
The exchange rate between the Russian ruble and British pounds as a result of the fall was 95.16 rubles to £1.
So, sympathy for Usmanov and Abramovich, anyone?
View gallery
.
