This will expand the possibilities of the Central Bank of Russia, which will be able to stop supporting the US dollar on the Russian market, the newspaper says. Analysts expect that the new rules will be introduced after the presidential elections on March 14.

“We must change the system of forming the ruble’s exchange rate policy,” Oleg Vyugin, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank, said at a news conference “Business ethics and corporate governance in Russia” in London. He suggested abandoning the policy of pegging the ruble to the dollar, replacing it by a basket of currencies – the dollar and the euro.

Indeed, Russia’s monetary authorities have reasons to review the foreign exchange rate policy, the Izvestia says. The largest part of export proceeds comes to Russia in the form of dollars, but the demand for euros is also significant, as part of imports is paid for in euros. That is why the strengthening of the ruble against the dollar was compensated by the euro’s strengthening against the American currency. This helped Russian producers as prices for imports from Europe remained high.

But Russian owners of dollars did not benefit from this advantage. The weakening of the dollar hit their personal savings, and they started shifting to the euro and the ruble instead. It became clear that the pegging of the ruble’s exchange rate to the dollar does not correspond to reality anymore.

This played into the hands of the Central Bank, the newspaper believes, - the new strategy will give it more freedom to determine the national exchange rate policy. It is the first step towards achieving the main goal of Russia’s foreign exchange policy – to ensure that the ruble is fully convertible, the Izvestia says.

However, this does not mean that the Central Bank will withdraw from the foreign exchange market. The Central Bank has enough foreign currency, and its ruble resources are unlimited. According to analysts, the real exchange rate of the Russian ruble (taking into account the inflation rates of the previous years) is still 17 percent below its level before the 1998 default. The Central Bank will work on this problem. For Russian people, the best strategy now would be to transfer their savings into rubles and wait until inflation goes down, the Izvestia concludes.