reporter: well, willie, i think diplomatically speaking, you heard matt there talk about the changes on the ground in detail, the daily changes. diplomatically speaking nothing has really changed, and that s the issue. those negotiations that president macron is trying to push, i guess they can delay things, certainly we may see a delay until secretary blinken and mr. lavrov meet later this week, if they do indeed meet. maybe there will be a delay until president putin and president biden can meet. but the reality is that fundamentally ukraine, the ukrainian government isn t going to start implementing minsk and the russians have been building dollar reserves for years and years going back to president putin s famous speech in munich, they now have $630 billion more than in reserves. when you look at that, that pretty much tells you that president putin has been preparing for this day for many,
shoring up the foreign currency reserves. 630 billion dollars of reserves that they can deploy as the ruble has collapsed. as he was expecting sanctions, some of the swift sanctions. so the ruble collapses but he won t be able to deploy that money. the hundreds of billions of dollars because the central bank has been cut off from the rest of the world essentially. it s been paralyzed. and what you are seeing is the ruble collapses, the central bank in russia raised interest rates to 20% trying to attract money into the banking system. so what the united states and europe, u.k. and even japan are trying to do is cause a collapse and a complete unwind of the banking system and the financial system in russia. there are some additional things going on. you see a run on atms and run on the banks with 20% interest
eugene robinson is back with us. and tim, we have the beginnings today of sanctions by the biden administration, based, first, on vladimir putin simply recognizing, as independent, the rebel controlled areas of ukraine. there are more sanctions to come. what can we expect to see in future sanctions? i think one thing the russians learned, lawrence, from the sanctions that were imposed after putin invaded and annexed crimea in 2014, was that they had to insulate themselves. russia now has massive currency reserves on order of 630 billion dollars, very little is dollar denominated, it s gold. the state budget has been pared back. so putin and his regime have
at the height of the cold war. but the question is, you know, what is the strategy here? what is the endgame? and i wonder if putin actually understands that or knows that. we can t know that, but we know putin has shown scant regard for human lives and international rules, and we know he has the weapons. let s turn now to the impact of unprecedented western sanctions against russia. the us treasury has blocked americans from engaging in any transactions involving russia s central bank, national wealth fund and finance ministry. the eu and the uk have also cut off all russia s banks from financial markets in the west. this was the immediate result on monday: russian interest rates more than doubled to 20% as the bank of russia tried to halt a slump in the value of its currency. by one estimate, around half of the russian central bank s total international reserves of $630 billion are likely to be frozen by the sanctions. the rouble plunged as much as 30% against the dollar to an all ti
scored a way like $630 billion he is survived the sanctions since 2014 from crimea as a historical figure trying to reestablish the soviet unit by grabbing ukraine and being off to other nations. yes we have talked about this before. i want some examples were determined great powers have stopped their behavior because of the threat of sanctions. that is why ukrainian officials are going to use a punishing sanctions do them now. even if we do them now they bring up a really good point, eric. it is so critical for the united states to be credible when russia has the kind of putin ambitions of a greater russian empire event type sanctions and russia.