The British Foreign Secretary revealed on the second day of her visit to Warsaw that 60% of Moscow’s reserves were no longer available to her, slightly higher than recent estimates. This follows moves by the US Treasury Department on Monday to make it more difficult for Russia to repay its debt in dollars. But Truss, speaking with Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rao, said the West urgently needed to move faster and faster to hurt the Russian economy, saying: “The only way to end this war is to lose “Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.” He warned: “Although the Russian troops were defeated in their initial attack in Kyiv, there has been no change in their intentions and ambitions. “We see Putin’s forces turning their attention to eastern and southern Ukraine, with the same reckless contempt for the lives of citizens and their nationality.” Poland is probably the United Kingdom’s closest European ally in the war with Ukraine, and during her two-day visit, Tra met with Polish Prime Minister Matthew Morawiecki. On Monday, he criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for talking to Putin, saying no one had spoken to Hitler. Trash is increasingly setting the bar for lifting Western sanctions on Russia, a move that is being welcomed in Poland. In the wake of alleged Russian war crimes, the UK has joined Poland and Ukraine in pushing the G7 – including Germany, France and Italy – to set specific timetables for ending their dependence on oil and gas. coal. The EU is expected to be willing to take action on coal and oil but not gas, as there is no infrastructure to end dependence on Russian gas imports. One third of Russia’s coal exports went to OECD Europe. Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey and Poland together accounted for 24% of Russia’s total coal exports in 2021. Since February, the EU has spent € 710 million (59 592 million) on Russian coal, 9.6 million. billion euros for Russian gas and 8.8 billion euros for Russian oil, according to pressure group Europe Beyond Coal. Tras claimed that the coordinated sanctions “pushed the Russian economy back to the Soviet era” and had a devastating effect on those who feed and finance Putin’s war machine. However, speaking ahead of a meeting of EU, G7 and NATO foreign ministers in Brussels this week, he said the West needed to go four steps further. These were the ban on Russian ships from ports, the repression of Russian banks.[going] following the industries that fill Putin’s war machine, such as gold, “and agreeing on a clear timetable for eliminating Russian gas and oil imports. The United States and the United Kingdom have already blocked all transactions with the Russian central bank’s gold reserves worth about $ 130 billion. Truss’s claim that 60% of Russia’s central bank reserves were beyond its means shows the success and limits of the Western sanctions regime. On one level the West can claim progress. Russia’s central bank, for example, announced last week that its foreign exchange and gold reserves had fallen by $ 38.8 billion since February and $ 604.4 billion on March 25, starting the war. On this basis, it would take less than a year for Russia to deplete the remaining foreign exchange reserves to which it can access. But in practice Russia is using capital generated through European markets for Russian gas channeled through Gazprombank to create a foreign currency to defend the ruble. At the beginning of the crisis, with a surprisingly bold move, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States froze Russian assets, making it impossible for Russia to sell its stocks in rubles. But Russia had sought to protect itself by pursuing a policy of building foreign exchange and gold reserves, increasing its reserves from $ 368 billion seven years ago to more than $ 630 billion. Figures from 2021 show that about 13% of its assets were stored in China, part of a conscious move by Russia to withdraw its reserves from the West. Until this week, the United States has allowed Russia to use its frozen funds to make dollar debt payments on a case-by-case basis. However, on Monday, for the first time, it prevented Russia from paying $ 552.4 million in a maturing bond to a maturing bond, saying it could not access its frozen funds. The Bank of Russia has responded to Western sanctions by doubling interest rates to 20% and urging unfriendly countries to pay for their gas supplies in rubles.
