BOSTON (AP) — The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling rising prospects that Moscow will soon default on external loans for the first time in more than a century.
Highlights
- S&P Global Ratings issued the downgrade to “selective default” late Friday after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles on Monday when they were due in dollars.
- Western sanctions have severely squeezed Russia’s economy.
- Russia has signaled that it remains willing to pay its debts, but the Kremlin also has warned that it would do so in.
- rubles if its overseas accounts in foreign currencies remain frozen.
- The country has not defaulted on foreign.
- debt since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the Soviet Union emerged.