Free Republic

Last week, Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov confirmed that about $300 billion of Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserve cushion had been frozen as a result of Western sanctions. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the move "theft." The collective West's decision to freeze Russian reserves abroad constitutes the bankruptcy of their obligations before Russia, and undermines faith in their currencies, President Vladimir Putin has said. "In the past weeks, a number of Western countries have taken illegitimate measures on the so-called 'freezing' of Russian assets. The collective West has factually drawn a line under the reliability of its...

Vladimir Putin is listening both to “a peace party” within his administration and “a war party,” responding positively first to the appeals of the first that Russia cannot afford an arms race and saying there won’t be one and then positively to the arguments of the second that Russia must be ready to defend itself." The peace party, which includes Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina, Presidential assistant Andrey Belousov, and former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin, argues that Russia must cut military spending to meet social needs and thus must reduce tensions with the West. Without such...

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Thursday Russia would consider extending financial aid to debt-strapped Greece if Athens were to make a request. “Well, we can imagine any situation, so if such petition is submitted to the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but will take into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between Russia and Greece,” he told CNBC. Speculation has grown in recent days that new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ government is at odds with the rest of Europe over sanctions on Russia, and may move closer to Moscow as it seeks to...