Putin asks ‘unfriendly countries’ to purchase Russian oil, gas in rubles

In an effort to prop up the value of the ruble that plunged post the massive sanctions imposed on Moscow by the US and European countries over the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced that the “unfriendly countries” must use rubles to buy the Russian oil and gas.

Putin said, “I have made a decision to implement in the shortest possible time a set of measures to switch payments for … our natural gas supplied to the so-called unfriendly countries to Russian rubles,” reported New York Times.

Sanctions aimed at the Russian central bank effectively froze hundreds of billions of dollars of assets. Putin said that the freeze was proof that the dollar and euro “compromised themselves” and were unreliable.