MINSK, Belarus (AP) — New cracks emerged Thursday in a Russia-led economic alliance, with the president of Belarus warning that his nation may opt out of it.

Alexander Lukashenko also sternly warned Moscow Thursday that his nation of 10 million will never be part of the "Russian world," a term coined by the Kremlin that reflects its hopes to pull ex-Soviet nations closer into its orbit.

"Those who think that the Belarusian land is part as what they call the Russian world, almost part of Russia, forget about it!" Lukashenko said. "Belarus is a modern and independent state."

Lukashenko, who has been at the helm since 1994, has relied on Russia's economic subsidies and political support but bristled at Moscow's attempts to expand its control over Belarusian assets.

He was dubbed "Europe's last dictator" in the West for his relentless crackdown on the opposition and free media, but Belarus' relations with the United States and the European Union have warmed recently as Minsk played host to crucial Ukrainian peace talks.

Lukashenko said he wants to normalize ties with Western nations and issued a clear warning to Moscow that it shouldn't expect Belarus to follow suit in defying the West.

In another signal of growing frictions between the two allies, Lukashenko, who plans to seek another term in elections this year, said he warned Moscow that he wouldn't step down.

"As for sending me into retirement, I harshly told them in the Kremlin that they won't succeed in bending me," he said.

Last month, he accused Moscow of damaging Belarus' economic interests with moves to restrict exports to Russia, which he said violated the rules of the Eurasian Economic Union, a grouping that comprises Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.

On Thursday, Lukashenko warned that if the agreements on forming the alliance aren't observed, "we reserve the right to leave the union."

Belarus, sandwiched between Russia and European Union members Poland and Lithuania, has profited handsomely from Moscow's ban on imports of EU food in retaliation to Western sanctions against Russia by boosting imports of food from the EU nations and reselling the food to Russia.

The Russian authorities have retaliated by restricting imports of Belarus' own milk and meat and banning transit of Belarusian food bound for Kazakhstan through its territory on suspicion that much of it ended up in Russia.

France says European Union sanctions against separatists in eastern Ukraine and their Russian backers will be reinforced in an attempt to force all sides back to the negotiating table.

French European Affairs Minister Harlem Desir said ahead of Thursday's meeting of EU foreign ministers that the bloc needs "the maximum toughness" in the face of continued fighting against government forces

"It is the duty of the EU now to prepare options for the future including, I think it's now necessary, the possibility of further restrictive measures against Russia which our leaders could then consider depending on what happens on the ground," he said.

MOSCOW: Russia sold only a fifth of the bonds it offered at its first debt auction since November as investors demanded yields higher

The Finance Ministry rejected 87 percent of the bids received at an auction of 5 billion rubles ($76 million) of May 2016 notes Wednesday. While the government paid an average yield of 15.27 percent, almost five percentage points more than at its last sale of the debt in November, that was still 125 basis points below the yield at Tuesday's close.

"The fact that investors aren't willing to purchase Russian debt at 15 percent interest rates tells you something has gone wrong somewhere," Neil Shearing, the chief emerging-markets economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said by phone. "There's a growing acknowledgment that Russia's public finances are on an unsustainable footing."

because if Russia is rated junk, then its companies will be too—which will increase the borrowing costs on their existing debt. It could also trigger earlier bond repayments, which, together with the higher interest rates, could, according to one official, cost them as much as $20 to $30 billion.

And that's $20 to $30 billion it really can't afford. Russia, as I've said before, doesn't have an economy so much as an oil-exporting business that subsidizes everything else. But it can't subsidize much when prices are only $50-a-barrel. That leaves Russia in a world of bad, worse, and Dostoevskian choices.

Cheaper oil, you see, means that Russian companies have fewer dollars to turn into rubles, which is just another way of saying that there's less demand for rubles—so its price is falling. But it can't fall too much or Russian companies, who have a lot of dollar debts they can't roll over due to Western sanctions, won't be able to pay back what they owe. Even worse, Russia banks could face a run on their foreign currency holdings, as people try to turn rubles they think will lose value into dollars that won't.

Russia can't wake up from this economic nightmare, though, because they're not asleep. This is their reality. After falling in almost perfect tandem with oil for most of the year, the ruble started free falling in December. In under a week, it went from 55 to 75 rubles per dollar—a 36 percent decline—and the panic got so bad that the bank run turned into an Apple and Ikea run. People decided that if they couldn't ditch their rubles for dollars, then they'd settle for the latest smartphones and assemble-it-yourself furniture instead.

Faced with this catastrophic loss of confidence in their currency, Russia did the only thing it could do: everything. First, it jacked up interest rates from 10.5 to 17 percent to try to get people to hold their money in rubles that would pay them a lot of interest rather than dollars that wouldn't. Then it started spending its $400 billion-ish war chest of reserves to prop up the ruble directly. And when that wasn't enough, it, well, "convinced" exporters to sell their dollars for rubles and made oligarchs bring their overseas money home to pay taxes. In Putin's Russia, this counted as kinder, gentler capital controls.

The result, as you can see below, was a short-lived ruble rally that has since dissipated. The problem, as Lars Christensen of Danske Bank told me, is that the ruble "should" be worth 75 per dollar as long as oil is around $50-a-barrel. What makes that even trickier, though, is that a currency doesn't fall to its fair value, but rather to the point at which it's expected to move up to its fair value. Markets overshoot, in other words, because nobody wants to buy rubles right before they hit bottom. That means, absent Russian intervention, the ruble would probably be trading around 80 or 85 per dollar, and maybe even lower.

The European Union will extend by six months sanctions imposed on Russia last March over its annexation of Crimea, add new people to those under sanctions and prepare new measures, draft conclusions for an EU foreign ministers meeting showed.

I didn't read much in this thread, but can somebody tl;dr if I should sell all my roubles or not?

European Union (EU) plans to give Ukraine a further 1.8 billion euros to help prop up an economy hit hard by a protracted conflict with Russian-backed rebels, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday (Jan 8).

The 1.8 billion euros (US$2.1 billion, S$2.8 billion) in medium-term loans will help Ukraine meet the "critical challenges" it faces and support the political and economic reforms the European Union believes are crucial to its future, said the Commission

"Ukraine is not alone. Europe stands united behind Ukraine and the reform agenda of the new government," Juncker said in the Commission statement. "The European Union has provided unprecedented financial support and today's proposal proves that we are ready to continue providing that support. This is European solidarity in action."

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini later added: "We have also said and will continue to say that the financial assistance is linked to their willingness to make reforms."

"It is clear that we need to see this commitment to reforms and some results," she said at another press conference in Riga, citing corruption as an example

he's already at that level :lol:

adrtho has a long long long long longgggggggggggggggggggg way to go before he reaches Polemides levels of agendas :lol:

-PB

One-Fifth Of Russian Banks Could Collapse In 2015

The Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting estimates that as many as 200 banks face collapse this year as a combination of bad loans and falls in the value of the ruble punish small- and mid-sized firms, Russian business daily Vedomosti reports.

For the country's banking sector the problems are even more severe. They hold a total $192 billion of external debt, around 70% of which is dollar-denominated, and that bill is getting ever larger as the ruble continues to slide against major currencies. Over the past year the ruble has fallen almost 50% against the dollar.

Why Russia’s Economy Will Not Collapse

GENEVA – The rapid depreciation of the ruble, despite a dramatic – and seemingly desperate – late-night interest-rate hike by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) last month, has raised the specter of Russia’s economic meltdown in 1998. Indeed, the West has sought to animate that specter in its ongoing confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But, though Russia’s economy is undoubtedly in trouble, a full-blown collapse is unlikely.
Oil and gas account for more than 60% of Russia’s exports; other primary commodities make up much of the rest. Given this, the recent sharp decline in world oil prices obviously represents a major shock – large enough, when combined with the effect of increasingly strict Western sanctions – to provoke a sizeable recession. To make matters worse, commodity prices are expected to remain low for some time. In that case, the income loss would become much more than a temporary setback.

But Russia is no economic basket-case-in-waiting – at least not yet. The situation today is very different from that in 1998, when Russia was running twin fiscal and current-account deficits. Russia needed to borrow, and it was borrowing heavily in foreign currency. This meant that as the ruble depreciated, Russia’s debts rose. Eventually, default became inevitable.
By contrast, in recent years, Russia has enjoyed a sizeable budget surplus, and public debt is below 20% of GDP. It is true that income from oil and gas, which represents the bulk of government revenues, has been halved when measured in dollars. But the Russian currency has fallen by about the same percentage, meaning that the government’s income in rubles remains approximately unchanged.
Similarly, Russia’s current-account balance has been mostly in surplus in recent years. Gross public and private external debt is below 40% of GDP, and much of it is denominated in rubles. The sharp fall in export income is rapidly changing the situation, but Russia is starting from a comfortable position. To panic would be premature.
The ruble’s free fall has been driven mainly by capital outflows. Russia’s famous oligarchs have already stashed most of their wealth abroad, but they retain significant savings at home. As the economic and political situation deteriorates, they are most likely pulling more money out. Small savers have every reason to switch into foreign currency as well.
This has put the CBR in a challenging position. The ruble’s depreciation is bound to fuel inflation, already around 11% and far above the CBR’s 5% target. In that context, raising the interest rate sharply makes sense, and officials may be hoping that the hike will stem capital outflows – despite the risk that the decision, if interpreted as being aimed at defending the currency, could have the opposite effect.
The trouble is that the higher interest rates are bound to deepen Russia’s economic downturn, making the CBR an easy scapegoat. Never mind that the central bank is not responsible for Russia’s troubles – the run on the ruble, the recession, and the flare-up of inflation – and that using interest rates to prevent capital outflows always fails. Embattled politicians can be counted on to point the finger.
The threat to Putin is clear. He risks the fate of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who presided during a period of unusually low oil prices. Until now, Putin has been lucky, coming to power just as oil prices started to rise. Most Russian citizens credit him with two decades of rising living standards, following decades of decline.
Putin’s decision not to implement the unpopular reforms that would have created a strong non-oil export sector may have been bad for the economy’s long-term health, but it has allowed him to maintain widespread public support. His economic good fortune, combined with his readiness to stand up to the West, has created a misguided impression in Russia that the country is, once again, a world power.
Many in the United States and Europe believe that ratcheting up economic pressure on Russia will help drive Putin out. This is an enormously dangerous gamble. As Russian living standards decline, Putin’s only viable strategy to remain in power will be an aggressive international posture. Foreign military adventures, after all, are most appealing when the domestic front is on fire.
None of this means that the West should bow and forsake its principles. But it does mean that the time has come for a diplomatic approach that does not depend on the prospect of Russia’s economic collapse.

I'd say avoid Thailand then, but there's a million Swedes there anyway :lol:

This is great. Im sick of seeing Russians everywhere when I go on holiday these days.

Russia won't default lol. Going to make a shit load on forex doe.

Credit-default swaps on Russian government bonds rose seven basis points to 598, according to data provider CMA. That’s near the highest level since 2009 and signals a 34 percent probability of default within five years, the data show

How does standard & poor downgrading the rouble connect to russrussia's anti gay legislation? ? Seriously thats a very long bow

and your point?? If you have one .

night club i once owed , and how it was a very big supporter of LGBT

the decision to supporter LGBT , was taken by my night club staff and manger...

Wtf are you on about this time??

How did you turn this into russian anti gay legistlegislation? Also s&p were the only agency to downgrade america to a - . If other angencies follow suit in downgrading russia then you have domething to talk about