My guess is it is a combination of:
Oil going from 145 to below $90 and
Foreign investors fleeing as Putin gets more “Soviet” by the day.
Thank you both.
Putin has leveraged oil producers to such an extent that producers are loosing money if oil drops below about $85 per barrel they start loosing money! “... Urals blend is now priced in Rotterdam at $88 per barrel. With the Primorsk FOB Urals price (ex-freight, clearing fees and port charges) at about $86/bbl, Russian companies are paying $68/bbl in export duties and another $17.40/bbl in oil extraction taxes. That results in more than $85/bbl being paid into the treasury in these two taxes alone...” http://fredfryinternational.blogspot.com/2008/09/only-in-russia-oil-producers-losing.html
Pootie has a very big problem is the producers stop producing!