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Putin Meets with Government Members To Announce Dramatic New Measures To Beat Back Economic Warfare

March 11, 2022 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin met in the afternoon of March 10 with leading government ministers and advisers to discuss the economic warfare launched against Russia, and to announce the measures they are taking in response. According to a transcript of the meeting posted on the Kremlin website, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov detailed a series of measures designed to protect the Russian economy from the aggravated assault by British and American financial interests, whose stated intent is to destroy Russia as a viable nation. The key measures include:

1) Departing foreign companies will be taken over by “external management”—i.e., by Russians.

2) Foreign capital flows out of the country are being “strictly controlled”—i.e., Russia has established capital and exchange controls.

3) Foreign debt will be paid in rubles, not dollars or euros: “We will pay off our external liabilities in rubles and carry out the conversion by de-freezing our gold and currency reserves,” Siluanov stated. He later elaborated that foreign creditors will only be able to convert their rubles back into dollars or euros out of the Russian funds that are now frozen abroad, i.e., that were stolen from the Russian Central Bank—if and when the Western powers decide to unfreeze those funds. This means that there will be no free convertibility of the ruble into dollars through the normal central bank window—a necessary step to prevent massive capital flight from bleeding the country white. It also means that the foreign creditors will be able to carry out those conversions only at the official ruble rate, which is now significantly devalued (by some 40%) from what it was before the crisis as a result of the financial warfare against Russia.

4) Russia has “introduced mandatory surrender of foreign exchange proceeds”—i.e., all export earnings must be turned over to the central bank.

5) Various measures were announced to defend the domestic real economy, including that the agriculture sector will be given a six-month moratorium on all debt service payments, with roll-over of existing loans, so they can function.

6) A 24/7 war room has been established to address problems in real time as they arise.

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