From "The Telegraph":
The Week The Dam Broke In Russia And Ended Putin's Dreams
Gallows humour is back in Moscow. Asked what he would do to stop the rouble spiralling out of control, the former governor of Russia’s central bank replied: “I would pick up a pistol and shoot myself.”
This was the week when the country’s long-festering crisis turned virulent. A last-ditch attempt to defend the exchange rate by raising interest rates to 17pc failed within hours, yet the shock is surely enough to set off a chain of corporate failures and push banks over the edge.
Traders in the City watched open-mouthed as the dam broke on Black Tuesday. The event exposed the awful reality that the Kremlin does not have the infinite foreign reserves that many had supposed.
“What is happening is a nightmare that we could not even have imagined a year ago,” says the central bank’s deputy chief, Sergei Shvetsov.
Read more here.
Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine by the National Security and Defense Council:
Obama Says Putin Presiding Over Economic Contraction -- CNN Interview
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has rejected the charge that he has been outmaneuvered by Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying in a TV interview due for broadcast later on Sunday that Putin was presiding over "a huge economic contraction" due to the Ukraine crisis.
Obama, in an interview with Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union" program, rejected the notion that Putin "is the chess master and outmaneuvering the West and outmaneuvering Mr. Obama and this and that and the other."
The United States and Europe have imposed a series of economic sanctions on Russia.
"And right now, he's presiding over the collapse of his currency, a major financial crisis and a huge economic contraction," Obama said in the interview, which was recorded on Friday.
"That doesn't sound like somebody who has rolled me or the United States of America."