West trying to make Russia a defaulter: Russian Finance Minister

Moscow/Washington: – The Russian Finance Minister has accused those Western countries are making frantic efforts to ensure that Russia does not repay the loans taken from foreign countries, after which the country would be declared a defaulter. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned that Russia will not fall prey to these tactics and will repay the loans in Rouble currency. The Russian debt stands at $40 billion and it is all in USD and Euro.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov accused that the foreign accounts of the Russian government and Bank of Russia have been frozen. These sanctions have been imposed to force Russia to become a defaulter country. There is no economic basis for these actions. At the same time, he dismissed the claims that Russia would not make the repayments. The Russian Finance Minister clarified that Russia is willing to make the repayment in Rubles.

The United States and the other western countries continue to shower stringent sanctions on Russia. Given these sanctions, Russia will be unable to use nearly 50% of its foreign reserves, amounting to $300 billion. At the same time, the United States has also stopped the USD supply to Russia and the European countries have indicated stopping Euro transactions. Therefore, the USD and Euro portion in the Russian coffers has become negligible. Russia is faced with the problems of repayment of loans given this. Before this, Russia had failed to repay the loans in 1998 and this had severe repercussions on the global economy. But the economists and financial institutions have claimed that a Russian default will not impact the global economy in the current times.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has claimed that there could be significant fundamental changes to the global economy given the Russia-Ukraine war. The IMF has warned that the Russia-Ukraine war is a significant jolt to the global economy and it will have a major impact on economic growth. IMF said that inflation would flareup and worldwide trade and supply chain would be affected. Meanwhile, Russia has also announced sanctions in retaliation to the US sanctions. The sanctions include US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, National Security advisor Jake Sullivan, CIA Chief William Burns, White House spokeswoman Jane Psaki and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.