Originally Posted by woj

Many Russian oil/gas companies have debt in USD, so every month they have to pay interest in USD to investors and when the debt matures they have to give back the USD that they borrowed...

so before sanctions, as the debt matured, these oil companies issued new debt, and everything worked great... in a way kinda like a ponzi scheme...

but now after sanctions, they can't borrow USD any more (at least not from the western financial markets) and so they are forced to sell RUB in order to buy USD so they don't default on the debt...

wall street journal probably explains it better than me though:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/russi...ebt-1412860551