The Russian ruble rose to a six-month high against the dollar, euro and yuan on Monday as Russia’s national currency strengthened amid government sales of the currency and limited demand for it at the start of the new year, Reuters and Yahoo said.

Russian rubles, euros and dollarsPhoto: Olga Shlyakhtina / Alamy / Profimedia Images

On Monday morning, the ruble gained 1% against the dollar, reaching an exchange rate of 87.5 to 1, the best for the Russian currency since June 30, 2023. It was also up 1.5% against the euro at 95.68 to 1, and down 0.9% against the yuan.

Russia’s national currency strengthened after Moscow’s Finance Ministry switched from buying foreign currency last December to selling as revenues from natural gas and oil exports missed estimates.

Current market interventions are carried out by the Ministry of Finance through the Central Bank under the leadership of Elvira Nabiullina.

Moscow’s central bank postponed the measure in August to avoid increasing pressure on the national currency, which fell below the psychological threshold of 100 units per dollar in August and October.

The Russian state has planned a mass sale of currency for the month of January

The Central Bank of Russia is going to sell 16.7 billion rubles ($190 million) worth of foreign currency every day until the end of January.

“This is quite a large amount, which will contribute to the further strengthening of the ruble,” said Oleksiy Antonov from the Russian consulting company “Alor Broker”. He also says that the traditionally low demand of importers for the currency at the beginning of the year will contribute to the strengthening of the ruble.

In addition, capital controls ordered by President Vladimir Putin in October are still in place.

However, Alfa Wealth analysts believe that these repeated interventions of the Russian state in the economy make it extremely difficult to forecast and evaluate the ruble exchange rate.

“Experts, analysts and ordinary investors almost always keep their finger in the air,” says analyst Oleksiy Klimiuk of Alfa, referring to one of the traditional methods of finding out which direction the wind is blowing.