Russia’s finance ministry announced late last week that it would start buying currencies and gold again in August after 18 months of selling or sitting on the sidelines as Moscow looks to profit from recent high oil prices, according to a report from Reuters. Russia ended a nearly one-year-long pause in their foreign exchange interventions in January when they began selling their yuan reserves under a budgetary mechanism designed to insulate the country’s economy from the volatility of commodity markets. FX purchases were halted in late January 2022, and the program was suspended after the invasion of Ukraine the ... (full story)