VLADIVOSTOK, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Russia's rouble panic spread
across 11 time zones on Thursday as citizens tried to exchange
their currency that was worth less with every passing day.
In Yakutsk and Yekaterinburg, St Petersburg and Vladivostok,
exchange booths refused to part with dollars at any price, as
Russians rushed to cash in their rouble savings for hard
currency.
In the southern Urals industrial city of Chelyabinsk, where
striking coal miners blocked the trans-Siberian railway over
unpaid wages last month, government officials were unable to
withdraw their own rouble salaries from the bank.
"Our local administistration uses cash machines to get our
salaries. Yesterday there was a (withdrawal) limit of 200
roubles and today the automatic teller machine is empty," said
Salim Fatykhov, the governor's spokesman.
In Vladivostok, Alexei, a local government employee, said he
had withdrawn his whole savings from the Sberbank state savings
bank and was trying to find somebody who would buy his roubles
for dollars on the black market.
"At the exchange points all the dollars have already been
sold," he said.
In Yekaterinburg, capital of the Urals region, small crowds
of mainly elderly people lingered in front of exchange points
that were shut.
"Some more time will pass, things will get quiet again, and
the state will find a new way to take our money," said a 40
year-old man who described himself as a "representative of
Russia's middle class" trying to swap roubles into dollars.
Reuters correspondents reported similar situations in
Russia's second city, St Petersburg.
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