President Putin says Russia is not abandoning the US Dollar.

BRICS News: Russian President Putin also immediately announced that Russia was not abandoning the US dollar.

Vladimir Putin: We are not abandoning dollar in Russia. They simply refuse us to allow to use dollar as a settlement tool. Well, even so, I think if we are denied that, it's so foolish of the US authorities because the dollar is the pillar of the US power, and they're undoing it by their own hand.

I thought that whatever happens, dollar is like a sacred cow. It should not be touched. It's in discontinuation. The other is dirty. They got rid of the horns.

Well, they are to blame on their own. The payments in dollars are decreasing. Not too much as of yet, but as means of savings. It's going down step by step, very gradually. It's shrinking, but it's a trend.

It's their own doing. But we're not fighting against it. Our proposals are not aimed against dollar. This is simply us rising to the challenge of modern times, a response towards the development of economy. We're thinking about the future tools and what's relevant today is what I've said before, creation of a system using already the groundwork of the systems in each country, exchanging of financial information, and those tools that I've mentioned will develop them.