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Comment by micwag | Hacker News Reader

> We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways

First point is true, but the second ist not. Germany went out its way to ensure all contracts are fulfilled to avoid this claim.

> it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe.

Russia very much wants to go back to selling gas and oil to europe, they have after all no other relevant industries and pipelines to China/India don't have the capacity to replace european delivery.

> Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately.

Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict and to be relegated to a possible chinese puppet state in the future.

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> Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict

how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?

To quote the state owned russian news agency:

> "Repeated case of interference of the Bank of Russia into implementation of the budget rule in terms of foreign currency purchases means that the floating currency rate regime existed from the end of 2014 until early 2018 is ‘only on paper now’ and is actually substituted by regulation of the currency market by the Bank for Russia for the purpose of eliminating threats for financial stability, jeopardized by the budget rule effect,"

https://tass.com/economy/1026029

This was 4 years ago, and is even more so true now. The ruble at the moment is NOT free floating.

A higher FX is usually neither here nor there and whether it's desirable depends on the makeup of exports vs imports. That's why countries often have a fixed peg instead of a "just make it go up" policy.

Russia is the definite loser out of this, and indeed everyone is, the decision to invade was a catastrophe for everyone on multiple levels.

> how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?

I always find it strange when people post comments like this. It is a clear indicator you don't understand financial markets.

If you were to look at the data yourself, you would see in Oct 2017 it was 58.11 and in Oct 2022 it is 57.88 (vs USD)

In your opinion, what does this indicate? FX is always "Currency vs currency", so has the Ruble weakened? Perhaps the US dollar strengthened? What caused the change? Is the change even meaningful?

Is the change "market driven" or has the state intervened?

It looks like the state has been actively defending it, so what is your actual point?

The contracts to buy gas were denominated in euros, they then refused to pay in euros and in fact seized the euros that were already paid but not yet converted. Even the most generous interpretation of a contract would struggle to consider this sort of behaviour not a violation.

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