By Krishna Kant, Business Standard

The ruble appreciated to 83 to the dollar intraday on Tuesday against a record low of 139 on March 7.

The ruble has recouped most of its losses and become the top-performing currency globally. It continues to gain and is up 60 per cent against the US dollar from its lows in the first week of March.

The ruble appreciated to 83 to the dollar intraday on Tuesday against a record low of 139 on March 7. Thanks to the recent rally, the ruble is only about 10 per cent lower than what it was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The ruble was trading at around 76 before the invasion, according to the data from Bloomberg.

Analysts say the post-invasion depreciation in the ruble is modest, considering the severity of European and American sanctions on Russia. As part of the sanctions, the United States and European Union froze nearly half the Russian central bank’s $640-billion foreign exchange reserves held in banks outside Russia.

Russian companies and individuals have been debarred from doing transactions in dollars and euros and nearly 400 Western firms have closed operations in Russia. A majority of the Russian banks have been cut off from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which executes financial transactions and payments among banks worldwide. These moves have cut Russia’s financial and trade transactions with Western countries.

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