The Russian economy is struggling thanks to unprecedented western sanctions. The value of the ruble has been down below a penny for the past few weeks as investors and regular Russians are doing their best to avoid it. Remember those long lines to take out dollars and euros at Russian ATMs?

Russia has done its best to stabilize the ruble by raising interest rates, but with the central bank cut off from accessing about half of its reserves held in foreign banks (in the US, Europe and Japan), it’s mostly been a losing battle. Today however, Putin has announced a new strategy which, if it works, would shore up the ruble and create a divide among his western enemies.

“I have made a decision to implement in the shortest possible time a set of measures to switch payments for … our natural gas supplied to the so-called unfriendly countries to Russian rubles,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday…

Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the action means that every time a Western country buys a barrel of oil it would be “propping up his domestic currency.”

Here’s video of Putin’s announcement:

Putin’s strategy had an immediate impact with the ruble improving to 95 to the dollar.

Just as importantly, Putin’s announcement creates a potential split between the US and UK, who have already stopped buying Russian oil and gas, and the EU which can’t afford to do so because it makes up about 40% of their energy supply. Andrew Weiss, who does Russia related research for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, posted a thread about Putin’s move to damage western unity.