Russia could lose more than a quarter of its international reserves at any moment

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Counter-sanctions from Russia (sending home more than half of the American embassy workers - there are now about a thousand of them, but 455 should remain, like Russian diplomats in the United States), the arrest of the embassy dacha and warehouse - these are correct measures, but belated, partial and therefore insufficient.

The belatedness of the measures is obvious: they react not to the refusal to cancel the past confrontational steps of the United States, which are more reminiscent of a cynical robbery, but to their new steps, which have already brought the relations between our countries to a qualitatively new level.

In addition, these measures are partial: they do not affect the second US embassy dacha in Moscow (which everyone is silent about) and allow the Americans to evacuate everything they need from their warehouse, that is, they do not cause real damage.

It is fundamentally important that, as Yakov Mirkin rightly noted, now Russia is faced with the question not of the prestige or format of relations with the United States, but of saving its own money, and very significant ones: $ 109 billion, that is, more than a quarter of all the country's international reserves, have been invested in US government securities and can be frozen at any time (after all, the United States has already frozen the assets of Iran, North Korea and Syria for tens of billions - after, like today's Russia, it declared them its enemies).

The bill passed by the Senate and Congress on sanctions, including against us, is not just an attempt to force Europe to buy instead of the "totalitarian" Russian "democratic" American gas - overpaying for "freedom" even more than Ukraine overpays.

This bill is part of a package inter-party agreement on a deep adjustment (and formally abolition) of Obamacare, and therefore Trump cannot refuse it for fundamental political, and by no means purely forceful reasons. And this bill also provides for an analysis of the consequences of the freezing of Russia's assets, that is, the beginning of the preparation of such a freeze!

Against this background, the promises of the US Treasury Secretary to act actively and destructively against us look by no means abstract, but a completely concrete threat.

The delay, which has become the norm for the behavior of the Russian bureaucracy, can turn into monstrous losses, since the freeze of $ 109 billion. in US government securities will cause panic and more devastating than it should be, the devaluation of the ruble - not to mention the collapse of a number of Russian banks, which now appear to be flawless.

But counting on the liberals of the government of Medvedev and the Bank of Russia Nabiullina, who serve not Russia, but global speculators (and therefore the United States as their organizing platform), is ridiculous.

And the loss of $ 109 billion. international reserves, that is, more than a quarter of them, is really on the agenda.