Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt, S&P says
CNNLondon CNN Business — Russia has defaulted on its foreigndebt because it offered bondholders payments in rubles, not dollars, credit ratings agency S&P has said. The agency said this amounted to a “selective default” because investors are unlikely to be able to convert the rubles into “dollars equivalent to the originally due amounts.” According to S&P, a selective default is declared when an entity has defaulted on a specific obligation but not its entire debt. A full foreign currency default would be Russia’s first in more than a century, when Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin repudiated bonds issued by the Tsarist government. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a press conference last week that any default would be “artificial” because Russia has the dollars to pay — it just can’t access them. “Not even close.” Russia has gone to great lengths to artificially prop up the ruble — which sank by as much as 40% to less than one US cent in the days after the invasion — including by hiking interest rates to 20%, and by forcing exporters to swap most of their foreign currency revenues for rubles.