Russian TV Host Fumes Over Ruble Collapse: 'They're Laughing at Us Abroad!'

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has demanded that the Russian Central Bank explain why the ruble is crashing.

Solovyov, one of the most well-known figures in Kremlin-backed media, made the remarks on his show that airs on Russia-1—an excerpt of which was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Francis Scarr from BBC Monitoring.

His heated comments came after the ruble slumped toward 100 per dollar on Wednesday, its weakest level in 16 months. The Bank of Russia later announced that it would halt purchases of foreign currency on the domestic market for the rest of the year.

"The bloody Central Bank, which has alarmed the whole country and isn't even explaining why the hell the ruble exchange rate has jumped so high that they're laughing at us abroad, at our ruble being one of the three weakest currencies," said Solovyov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Thanks to the 'genius' policy of the Central Bank which despises the people so much that it won't even say a single word to them about what it's doing!" He added.

The Russian currency has slumped amid sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and other Western allies in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia was kicked out of the SWIFT global banking system, while Western nations blocked Russia's access to some of its foreign reserves. Europe also froze purchases of Russian oil and gas, and in December 2022, the G7 agreed on a price cap on Russian crude and refined petroleum products, putting further strains on the ruble.

The Wilson Center, a United States-based think tank, said Russia's road to economic recovery has been made significantly more difficult by its anti-Western and isolationist rhetoric.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry via email for comment.

On July 6, Anatoly Aksakov, a member of Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, said that the ruble's temporary collapse on June 26 was partially caused by the need to inject funds into the parts of Ukraine that were annexed by Putin last fall.

He said the price of Russian oil affected the ruble exchange rate, but the cost of spending in the "new territories" also played a role, the Russian state-run news agency Interfax reported. He was referring to the four Russian-annexed regions of Ukraine: the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia is not fully in control of any of the four regions, and foreign governments, including the United States, said the move was illegitimate.

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