President Vladimir Putin says the Kremlin will restrict the movement of money or take other "emergency measures" to stem the slide of the ruble.
Speaking to businesspeople ahead of the APEC summit in Beijing, President Vladimir Putin said Russia is taking "necessary steps" in response to the "serious fluctuation" of the ruble.
The ruble has lost 40 percent of its value this year due to concern over the Ukraine crisis, related Western sanctions, and falling prices for oil and gas whose export is crucial to the economy.
Putin said that Russia's "fundamentals in terms of currency reserves and balance of payments remain at good levels. That allows us to control the situation without taking any extraordinary emergency steps."
"We are not planning to impose any restrictions at all on capital flows."
Russia's TASS news agency, in a story just over an hour ago, ignores Ukrainian authorities' announcement that they were investigating the blast at a pub in Kharkiv as a "terrorist" incident. Instead, they cite the very early speculation:
Household gas explosion was initially presumed as the cause of the blast, the Ukrainian National News Agency said earlier.
Putin has accused pro-Kyiv and Ukrainian forces of responsibility for the fighting that has prevented investigators from returning to the site of the Malaysian airliner crash site in rebel-held eastern Ukraine. He was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying "the opposite site is constantly shelling this territory, and that does not permit comprehensive work at the site of the crash."
A number of Western government and intelligence sources have accused the Russian-backed separatists of shooting down the commercial airliner in mid-July, killing all 298 people aboard.
Can't confirm location or date of this video, which was posted today and is being circulated as further evidence of tank movements in Donetsk.
The latest from Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council:
