Bloomberg says Russia defaulted on its external sovereign bonds for the first time in a century, the culmination of ever-tougher Western sanctions that shut down payment routes to overseas creditors.
Russia has reportedly defaulted on its foreign-currency sovereign debt for the first time since 1918.
For months, Russia had reportedly found paths around the penalties imposed after the Kremlin’s so called “special military operation” in Ukraine.
But a grace period on about 100 million U.S. dollars missed bond payments — blocked because of wide-ranging sanctions — ends on Sunday night, according to Bloomberg. There won’t be an official declaration, and Russia is already disputing the designation, but if investors don’t have their money by the deadline, there will be an “event of default” on Monday morning, according to the bond documents.
Meanwhile, Russia calls any default artificial because it reportedly has the money to pay its debts but says sanctions have frozen its foreign currency reserves held abroad.
Russia’s finance minister calls the default label a ‘farce’.
“There is money and there is also the readiness to pay," Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last month. “This situation, artificially created by an unfriendly country, will not have any effect on Russians’ quality of life.”
The Kremlin continues to press the point of having the ability to make the payment in Rubles, something the creditors were unaccepting of, 'forcing' a foreign debt default for the first time since 1918.
Russia owes about $40 billion in foreign bonds, about half of that to foreigners. Before the start of the war, Russia reportedly had around $640 billion in foreign currency and gold reserves, much of which was held overseas and is now frozen.
Russia has faced economic crisis before but even then the default was local not overseas. During Russia’s financial crisis and ruble collapse of 1998, President Boris Yeltsin’s government defaulted on $40 billion of its local debt.
