For years, the Kremlin has thundered that the age of the dollar was ending. The greenback was a weapon, we were told — an instrument of pernicious American coercion that Russia would cast aside as it built a new, sovereign financial order.

De-dollarization was destiny, not just policy. Moscow would lead the world toward a multipolar system where Washington no longer held the whip hand. State media treated the dollar’s decline as not just inevitable, but imminent.

Behind all the defiant, chest-thumping bluster, Russia is reportedly considering a return to the supposedly toxic dollar settlement system, provided sanctions are lifted.

According to Bloomberg, an internal Kremlin memo outlines potential areas of convergence with Washington. These include re-entering the dollar settlement system, pursuing joint oil and gas ventures, cooperating on critical minerals, collaborating on nuclear energy, and even offering preferential conditions to U.S. firms re-entering Russia.

The price? Sanctions relief and restored access to dollar transactions.

If the Bloomberg report is accurate, the Kremlin is contemplating a volte-face so sweeping it would be high farce. After years of bombast about de-dollarization, financial sovereignty and the imminent demise of Washington’s monetary hegemony, Moscow is reportedly weighing a return to U.S. dollar settlements. 

The same leadership that cast the dollar as a geopolitical weapon now appears ready to holster its own rhetoric and step back into the system it denounced.

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Since the invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has framed the dollar-based financial system as the backbone of Western economic warfare. Russia accelerated efforts to settle trade in rubles and yuan, boosted gold reserves and championed alternative payment systems. 

At successive BRICS summits, Moscow positioned itself at the forefront of a campaign to chip away at the dollar’s dominance and construct a parallel financial architecture to rival the Bretton Woods system.

Yet this ambition long predates the war. Efforts to reduce reliance on the dollar stretch back to the........

© The Moscow Times