Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Putin Is Throwing His Weight Behind the Euro

Even as Russia steadily cuts holdings of U.S. assets, it’s planning to sell bonds denominated in the EU currency.

November 28, 2018 at 7:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

A toast to dedollarization.
Photographer: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

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Russia is preparing to sell bonds denominated in euros for the first time since 2013. Despite the recent drop in oil prices, it has a budget surplus and doesn’t really need to borrow; the bond placement is a test of the “dedollarizarion" program, put in place by President Vladimir Putin this year.

If the test and the plan are successful, the European Union will get an unlikely but important ally for its efforts to bolster the global role of its common currency.