Vladimir Milov: “About the ruble exchange rate and oil”

“The fact is that the key source of financing for the Russian economy (“getting up from its knees”) in recent years has been loans from Western banks. The scale of attracting loans in the West was staggering: if 10 years ago the total external debt of Russian banks and companies was about $100 billion , then this year it reached its peak - in July the total debt was $660 billion, which is one and a half times higher than the foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank. On October 1, it dropped slightly to $615 billion, but this is still a mind-boggling debt.

A significant part of these loans are relatively short-term, they need to be refinanced all the time, that is, take out new loans in order to pay off the old ones."