![](\"https:\/\/a57.foxnews.com\/static.foxbusiness.com\/foxbusiness.com\/content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/931\/523\/sberbank-russia-3-1-22.jpg?ve=1&tl=1\")
<\/picture>\nPeople lining up outside a branch of Russian state-owned bank Sberbank\u00a0<\/span> (MICHAL CIZEK\/AFP via Getty Images \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n RUSSIA LOOKS TO CUT GAS SUPPLIES TO FINLAND AMID NATO BID<\/strong><\/p>\n Because energy prices have been so high, Russia is taking in a lot of foreign currency – but, because it's under such heavy sanctions, it really can't spend the money. As a result, the ruble is counter-intuitively strong. It had traded 100 to the dollar in the earliest days of the war. Now it's hovering around 63. The government needs to convert more money at this level to pay the ruble salaries of state employees, but the benefit of the symbolism of a strong ruble apparently outweighs, for now, the economic costs of sustaining the currency at its elevated rate of exchange.<\/p>\n "The Central Bank is very careful about removing any of the restrictions that are making the ruble so strong, so expensive now. This is largely done so that the average person who walks past a currency exchange office sees there are sixty-three rubles for the dollar," Mironenko said. "This is the main indicator for him – makes him think everything is not so bad – the ruble has appreciated, so we have shown the Americans.<\/p>\n "That's how the average Russian's logic works. I read different chats – it's this kind of social bubble window in which you're together with like-minded people. And, in these chats, a lot of people come up with precisely this reasoning: the ruble has strengthened, which means that all is well with the economy, sanctions have not hurt us in any way, the West needs our oil, so they won't go anywhere from us, and they will come crawling back to us."<\/p>\n Customers lining up to use ATMs inside a shopping mall in Moscow, in February 2022.<\/span> (Andrey Rudakov\/Bloomberg via Getty Images, File \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n MCDONALD'S TO SELL RUSSIAN BUSINESS<\/strong><\/p>\n Mironenko said the sanctions on technology and parts for many things will have a tremendous effect on Russia's economy because the country's production is tied in very closely with the global supply chain, but that is not going to change Russia President Vladimir Putin's course. It will be a slow decline of everything, he says, but like Iran which has been under sanctions for 40 years, life will go on. Sanctions on oligarchs he claims are not a way to get at Putin.<\/p>\n "I don’t think he communicates with the oligarchs these days, most likely because both sides don't see much point in it. Because the same oligarchs who complain to the European press how they’ve lost everything–what–they will come to Putin and what will they say to hi??? ‘Volodya, I lost everything, stop the war in Ukraine!’ Which is clearly the main project of Putin’s life right now," Mironenko said.<\/p>\n Ukrainian first responders carrying an injured pregnant woman from a shelled maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9. The woman and her baby died days later.<\/span> (AP Photo\/Evgeniy Maloletka, File \/ AP Newsroom)<\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/a57.foxnews.com\/static.foxbusiness.com\/foxbusiness.com\/content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/931\/523\/financial-institutions-2-25-22.jpg?ve=1&tl=1\")
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