Russia may face 'deep recession': IMF chief

Washington/Moscow: Russia may face a "deep recession," IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva has said, as she warned that the impact of the "unprecedented" Western sanctions on Moscow for its military aggression against Ukraine will be "quite severe" for the Russian economy.

IMF's Managing Director Georgieva also said that a Russian sovereign default is no longer an improbable event because the economic sanctions on Russia will prevent it from accessing foreign reserves and paying down the outstanding debt.

Half of the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Bank of Russia have been frozen due to sanctions, Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Sunday.

This is about half of these reserves that we had. We have a total amount of reserves of about $640 billion. Currently we cannot use about $300 billion of these reserves, Russia's state-run TASS news agency quoted him as telling the Rossiya 1 TV channel.

In Washington, the IMF chief told CBS News on Sunday that the reason the sanactions are "unprecedented" because the "unthinkable happened, a devastating war in

Ukraine."

Georgieva said the impact of the sanctions is "quite severe for the Russian economy. We expect a deep recession in Russia, and this abrupt contraction is affecting already how the Russian population is taking the heat on them.