President Boris Yeltsin, blaming Russia's woes partly on global problems, declared yesterday he would not devalue the rouble and appealed to parliament to hold a special mid-recess session to approve crisis measures.
Shares rose so sharply after a slump on what was dubbed "Black Thursday" that trading was suspended. But dealers said trade was so thin it did not signify a return of confidence in the government's ability to fend off a financial collapse.
Visiting the medieval city of Novgorod, south of St Petersburg, Mr Yeltsin sought to reassure markets and respond to blunt US calls to put his house in order.
"There will be no devaluation. That's firm and definite," the 67year-old President told reporters. "At the moment, there is a new wave of world financial crisis and we have to brace ourselves again to be able to deal with this situation. We've calculated our reserves and are ready to resist this wave."
Mr Yeltsin, looking well after several weeks' holiday, said he had no intention of interrupting his vacation in the Valdai lakeland to return to Moscow. "That would signify that there was turmoil," he said.
Mr Yeltsin's communist opponents said they were ready to agree to a session of the State Duma, where they are a dominant force, but made clear they wanted to take the cabinet to task rather than discuss its legislative initiatives. The Kremlin spokesman, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said later Mr Yeltsin had signed an appeal to the Duma to break its summer recess to hold an extraordinary meeting on government draft laws.
The Russian Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, who was yesterday visiting the city of Kazan east of Moscow, has been urging the Duma to return next week to pass a dozen tax and other bills which ministers say form a vital part of anti-crisis austerity measures intended to restore economic stability. The Duma has yet to decide whether to convene.
A central bank spokeswoman, Ms Irina Yasina, said the bank chief, Mr Sergei Dubinin, and the Kremlin debt negotiator, Mr Anatoly Chubais, were returning from holiday this weekend, but denied there was any plan to devalue the rouble while markets were closed.
The communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, sounded sceptical about Mr Yeltsin's appeal but agreed a parliamentary session was timely now that the President had "woken up at last". He demanded that the first item on the agenda be a report by Mr Kiriyenko on how he planned to end the crisis.
The markets crisis started on Thursday, when investors were shaken by a letter to London's Financial Times from the financier, Mr George Soros, calling for the rouble to be devalued and then fixed against the dollar or the euro, a plan instantly rejected by the Russian central bank.
Yesterday President Clinton had a 40-minute telephone conversation with Mr Yeltsin. Aides said he urged the Russian leader to take firm action. Mr Clinton will visit Moscow from September 1st to 3rd. His spokesman, Mr Mike McCurry, said Washington was working on a way to help but declined to be drawn on whether there might be more cash for Russia, which won a $22.6 billion bail-out, led by the International Monetary Fund, last month.