Economists with whom Kyiv Post spoke indicated that the ruble’s current value of less than 100 to the US dollar, is due to a Kremlin political decision to show normalcy before Russia’s so-called presidential “elections” later this month. Following the elections, however, there is a high probability that the ruble will greatly decline in value.
“I expect the ruble to slide versus the dollar in the second or third quarter of 2024 by 15 percent or more. Reasons: in late summer of 2023, the Russian government decided to defend the ruble against the 100 ruble/dollar mark and introduced very costly measures, such as interest rate hikes,” said American economist Oleksandr Lugovskyy.
The Russian ruble, which a year ago went for 76 to the dollar, is currently going for 91.36.
Late in the summer of 2023, “the Russian government decided to defend the ruble against the 100 ruble/dollar mark and introduced very costly measures, such as interest rate hikes,” Lugovskyy said, continuing that: “There is no economic significance to the 100-dollar mark, indicating that the decision is political.”
The idea that there will be a significant slide in Ruble value, after elections, was echoed by Lugovskyy’s brother, economist Volodymyr Lugovskyy, a professor of economics at Indiana University, who said “I am not alone in expecting the ruble to fall badly within a month or so after ‘elections,’” continuing that “It had to happen long time ago, but the ruble was kept at 100 at a great cost for the Russian economy for political reasons.”
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Vladimir Putin’s “re-election” is “not in doubt,” according to commentary Mark N. Katz, a George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government professor, told Newsweek, which would mean that in the near-term, rapid changes in the ruble may be at hand, if the economists’ projections prove to be correct.
For Moscow, it is not only the value of the ruble that should be robbing Kremlin economists and common citizens of sleep as, there are “many spheres of the Russian economy are in decline and the state of the Russian economy may further worsen if the US and EU keep applying target imports against critical imports,” Professor Lugovskyy said.
The ruble received some relief on Wednesday as oil prices buoyed its decline. However, ongoing Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s oil refineries will cause more long-term pain for Russia’s economy, as it cuts the state’s ability to refine what the US Treasury Department estimated, in 2023, was 23 percent of the Russian national budget – oil revenues.
Bloomberg has estimated that 12 percent of Russia’s oil output was lost this week due to the Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s oil refineries.
“The Russian government is facing steep hurdles to fund their budget (including large military expenditures),” Volodymyr Lugovskyy said, “they will likely end up depreciating the ruble after Putin begins his new presidential term and political pressure to keep the ruble below the 100 mark (vs the dollar) subsides.
Russia, currently the most sanctioned country in history, faced rapid devaluation of its currency following the fall-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but has since brought the ruble under control through several emergency measures, including the heavy use of foreign currency reserves to keep the Russian currency afloat.
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Comments (2)
Attributed copy-pasta plus oblique non-committal quotes from underwhelming sources at obscure universities and think-tanks is about the standard I'd come to expect from the JJ Smart personal brand. Sadly, I'd recently been under the much-relieved impression that Kviv Post had finally reclaimed its journalistic self-respect, and rid itself of this aggressively ignorant and offensively stupid contributor, who has yet to have anything to say that I have recognized as having any value. But as it turns out, and same as it ever was, 'Ukraine's Global Voice' is still just a lot of American and pro-EU liberal-intelligentsia propagandists presuming to speak for a nation they are mere tourists in, as it fights for its very existence
@Incredulousiconoclast,
Ha thats funny.....all your postings end with either how disappointed you are with the quality of authors, articles or Kyivpost in general. But look at how much you wrote today.....this article must have really hit you hard?
Me I was thinking that with the rouble so cheap, I'm wondering if the USA will add the remaining Aleutian Islands to their Alaska purchase. Even at current exchange rates, it probably won't cost more than the money putinrump already owes them
In the interim we will all wait with baited breathe for another of your (not) informing posts about how awful it is for you to have to read stuff here every day.
@John, actually, it only takes a few minutes each day. My disappointment is in having put so much effort into isolating a few sources on this crucial war which are not inundated with fashionable narratives. With KP, I keep trying because now & then comes the odd post containing an actual fact or two, actually resembling journalism
Then the Snyders & Francises & Smarts keep popping up, none of them Ukrainian and none of them bound to that country's future, and they have the gall to spout campus-grade filler like 'liberal democracy' as though they had any standing to proclaim to the world what is best for a people fighting for survival, and calling this 'Ukraine's Global Voice."
The compulsion of it is, I just don't want to believe such presumptuous arrogance can be sustained, so I keep checking to see if it has changed, but it never does.
I want to believe that jet-set tourists who preach what is best for other people's countries might just stop such bad behavior. It's what I hate most about my own USA, and it has a name: "paternalistic imperialism". It will destroy my own country: we're just not qualified to play God to the world and never have been.
But thanks for reading my comments; you have your reasons, too.
Rubles cost more to print than they are worth, the value is artificial at present due to a mixture of lies, deceit and government subsidy. Russia may as well pay their workers in toilet paper.
Nobody is trading in Rubles and even India and China won't pay for oil in Rubles, they pay in Chinese Yuan.
Putin has screwed his people for at least two decades. His demand at the start of the invasion that everyone would be forced to pay for Gas in Rubles led to Europe dropping the import almost entirely.
Russia doesn't make anything, it exports raw materials. Problem for Russia is you can buy those anywhere so he is selling at a loss.
Buy Russian oil if you want, you are helping to backriupt them.