Dear friends,
Today I am posting a video of what I think is an extremely important interview of Andrei Kostin, the resident and Chairman of the Management Board of powerful Russian VTB Bank (who basically speaks for Russian banking). At a recent meeting of Russian banker Kostin made the official proposal for Russia to switch from the US Dollar to the Russian Ruble as payment currency for Russian exports. This proposal has received the backing of the CEO of Gazprom, Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft and Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Rostec (for those of you unfamiliar with the names Gazprom, Rosneft and Rostec, I urge you to click on the links to the Wikipedia article about them but basically this is Russian Gas, Oil and Industry - including the powerful Oboronprom - Defense). This proposal has even received the support of Alexei Kudrin. In other words, this proposal has the backing of basically all of the Russian "Big Money".
The interview I am posting below has Andrei Kostin explaining in details why this is a good idea, how it could be done, and what that would mean for Russia.
I honestly do not have the time to translate this video or to provide subtitles. I would be most grateful if any Russian speaker reading this could either provide a script of a translation into English or, even better, a subtitled video. Друзья - если можете, помогите!
In the meantime - here is the video in Russian.
Cheers,
The Saker