Russia defaulted on its international debt Monday, the White House said. The Kremlin missed two interest payments for $100 million due Sunday for a pair of loans that have been overdue since May 27th. On Sunday night the grace period on the bonds, one of which was in US dollars and the other in Euros, expiried. This is the first time Russia has failed to meet its international bond obligations since the 1918 economic crisis sparked by the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik takeover of Moscow. Moscow has downplayed the impact of international sanctions on the Russian economy and the Russian government’s ability to access foreign capital and credit. With $40 billion in outstanding bonds, some analysts predicted it was only a matter of time before Russia defaulted. "Since March we thought that a Russian default is probably inevitable, and the question was just when," Dennis Hranitzky, head of sovereign litigation at law firm Quinn Emanuel, told Reuters .
