Italy Stops Trading With Russia

Payments in rubles have been terminated.

Attempts by the Russian authorities to establish trade bypassing the dollar and the euro have encountered new problems, writes The Moscow Times.

Italy has stopped accepting rubles as payment for goods supplied to Russia, said Ferdinando Pelazzo, head of the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce.

According to him, the decision was made by the Italian Financial Security Committee, which unites several ministries.

“We started conducting transactions, everything was fine, the conditions were acceptable. But then the Committee <...> told us that it does not recommend this scheme,” Pelazzo said.

He added that the authorities cited circumvention of sanctions as the justification for blocking ruble payments. As a result, the mechanism, launched in February, worked for only about two months and did not even survive the test period, which was expected to last until May.