Your Evening Briefing: Russia Teeters On the Brink of Default

Russia may be on the verge of default. The Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee—which includes Goldman Sachs, Barclays and JPMorgan—said Wednesday that a “potential failure-to-pay” event occurred for credit-default swaps when Russia paid rubles after foreign banks declined to process U.S. currency transfers. If Russia doesn’t pay up in dollars by the time its grace period expires on May 4, it would be the country’s first default on external debt in more than a century. Holders of the swaps could then start the process of getting paid on contracts covering about $40 billion of debt.

This potential financial calamity (for Russia) is of course tied to Vladimir Putin’s bloody war on Ukraine and the subsequent storm of sanctions that’s rained down upon him. Some eight weeks after he sent troops across his southern border, Putin has failed to take Kyiv and reportedly lost thousands of soldiers and untold amounts of equipment. Now a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, if not decades.