Russia’s credit rating was cut to “junk” by Standard & Poor’s on Monday night, underscoring the dramatic economic deterioration in the world’s largest energy exporter. The downgrade is the latest blow to the Kremlin, already buffeted by a collapse in oil prices , wild gyrations in the value of the rouble and western sanctions that have all but shut Russian companies out of global capital markets. It comes as a sharp increase in fighting has ripped apart a fragile ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, triggering threats of fresh sanctions against Russia from the west. The downgrade had been widely anticipated by investors, but the rouble nonetheless tumbled on the news, dropping to 68.76Rb to the dollar. S&P said the downgrade, the first time in a decade that Russia has been assessed as below investment-grade by one of the […]