Carole Ferry, edited by Gauthier Delomez 7:30 a.m., March 2, 2022

Russia has been facing heavy economic sanctions since its military intervention in Ukraine.

And among them, many concern the Russian central bank, a large part of whose war chest is placed abroad, and therefore essentially unusable.

DECRYPTION

The pressure of economic sanctions is mounting on Russia.

After the military invasion in Ukraine, several multinational companies made strong decisions on Tuesday, like Apple which suspended the sale of all its products in Russia, or Boeing which stopped its operational services to Russian airlines.

If the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire has tempered his words of "total economic and financial war" with Russia, international pressure continues to intensify, in particular on the Russian central bank, which is absolutely strategic.

>> Find the morning of the day in replay and podcast here

Russian assets frozen abroad

The Russian central bank holds more than $630 billion.

It is his war chest that can enable him to resist economically, and to finance the conflict in progress.

Except that this money is essentially placed abroad.

France, for example, holds about 12% of these assets.

And in France, as in all the allied countries, these assets are now frozen, Russia can no longer recover them.

There remains, however, the question of funds held in countries that are not yet really pronounced.

For example, a query resides for China.

In all, 14% of these assets are in the country.

Will Beijing agree to pay them to Russia if necessary?

>> READ ALSO

- Russian military invasion in Ukraine: why China's position is ambiguous

The difficulty of transforming gold into dollars or euros

Finally, on its territory, the Russian central bank has gold.

But currently, it no longer has the right to transform it into dollars or euros, unless it finds friendly countries that agree to help it.

This is why everyone's position will be decisive.

The main Russian bank Sberbank leaves the European market

Sberbank Group, Russia's main bank, announced on Wednesday that it was withdrawing from the European market, after being hit by massive financial sanctions in retaliation for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

"In the current situation, Sberbank has decided to withdraw from the European market. The group's subsidiary banks are facing abnormal outflows of funds and threats to the security of their employees and offices," the group said in a statement. a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.