Ruble soars following Putin meeting with OSCE chief
MOSCOW. May 7 (Interfax) - The ruble is posting strong against the dollar and euro on the Moscow Exchange following Russian President Vladimir Putin's meeting with OSCE Chairman-in-Office Didier Burkhalter, including Putin's calls for representatives of southeast Ukraine to cancel a referendum planned for May 11.
The OSCE will also propose a road map for a Ukraine solution in the next few hours to participants of multilateral talks in Geneva.
The dollar was down 27.5 kopecks from previous closing to 35.135 rubles/$1 by 5:33 p.m. and the euro down 29 kopecks to 48.96 rubles/EUR1.
The bi-currency basket $0.55 and EUR0.45) fell 33 kopecks in value to 41.36 rubles.
The dollar and the basket fell to their lowest levels for almost a month, and the basket found itself at the sort of levels which do not trigger Central Bank interventions to defend the ruble for the first time since the beginning of April. In other words, the basket fell out of the Central Bank's moderate interventions zone, which has been 41.45-42.45 rubles since May 2.
The rally did not end there: the ruble had fallen below 35 to the dollar for the first time since April 1 by 5:53 p.m. The dollar was down 42 kopecks from previous closing to 34.99 rubles/$1 by then and the euro was off 58 kopecks to 48.77 rubles/EUR1. The currency basket had fallen 49 kopecks to 41.19 rubles.