The Treasury Department will not allow any Russian government debt payments from accounts at U.S. financial institutions to be made in U.S. dollars, restricting one of the strategies President Vladimir Putin is employing to stave off default, an agency official said Tuesday.
Russia faced an April 4 deadline to make another debt payment. The Kremlin must now choose between draining remaining valuable dollar reserves, new revenue coming in or default, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to speak on the record.
