Fueled by petrodollars, Russia still has a major cushion in its $450 billion in foreign-currency reserves. But those are down by 25 percent from August.
By Brian Whitmore (RFE/RL) – The ghosts of 1986 are haunting the Kremlin.
That was the year when a precipitous drop in oil prices, from around $30 per barrel in late 1985 to just over $10 by mid-1986, crippled the Soviet economy and helped expedite the breakup of the USSR just five years later.
With crude prices again falling by two-thirds -- from just under $150 per barrel in July to slightly more than $50 today -- the Russian political elite is getting visibly jittery.
This article is in full on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website,
http://www.rferl.org/content/T...