MOSCOW – Activities reached boiling points on the Russian foreign-exchange market yesterday, forcing the Central Bank (CB) to dip really deep into reserves to curtail the appreciation of the ruble against the U.S dollar — at a record cost of over $3 billion — the biggest foreign-exchange intervention in its history.

According to market observers, the CB took the unprecedented move when the ruble’s exchange rate hit a three-year minimum level of 28.43 rubles against the dollar. The high-level tone of activity was set early on the foreign-exchange market yesterday, when a lot of commercial banks started offloading their dollars in huge amounts, putting an extraordinary pressure on the U.S greenback. However, the largely expected slide in the dollar’s exchange value was reigned in when the CB intervened and mopped up the excess dollars on the market. This stalled a further appreciation of the ruble against the dollar yesterday, market observers said, but predict a further fall in dollar’s rate.

In a related development, as of 11:30 am Moscow time, the weighted average dollar-exchange rate for tomorrow settlements was RUR28.53, driving the official dollar-exchange rate for Feb. 12 up by RUR0.02, according to RBC.