“It said they had dollars so I came here immediately,” said Alexei Presnyakov, 32, pointing to an app for Tinkoff Bank, indicating he could withdraw hard currency. About 20 people were queueing. “Yesterday [the rate] was 80 [to the dollar]. Today it’s 100. Or 150.
“I just made a spontaneous decision today that I would go around until I took out all my money,” he added. “Before it was worth zero.”
Within minutes, however, the word travelled down the queue: the dollars were gone.
Nearly half the queue left. “Who needs roubles?” one woman said sarcastically as she walked away.
From shopping malls to boardrooms, Russians were trying to find their footing yesterday in what the Kremlin described as the “altered economic reality” that the country was now facing following sanctions on Russia’s central bank and other key financial institutions. There were signs that something extraordinary was taking place: the Moscow stock exchange halted trading until 5 March.
This story is from the March 01, 2022 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the March 01, 2022 edition of The Guardian.
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