So far, the Central Bank has been basically maintaining the exchange rate by dipping into its reserve to buy rubles.

If the ruble threatened to devalue outside of that range (or "band"), the Central Bank would intervene by spending foreign reserves to buy rubles.

The report said all legally registered enterprises and organizations would be able to buy and sell rubles when the exchanges opened in January.

The main one is to shore up the reserves of the Central Bank to permit it to buy rubles and maintain the currency's value.

But the right to buy rubles with dollars at realistic rates is quite different from the right to buy dollars with rubles.

Most important, the West did not provide a $6 billion stabilization fund that the Russians could use to buy rubles and thus strengthen the currency.

At the latter rate - the one the rest of the world uses to buy and sell rubles - a Belarusian millionaire is currently worth about $3.

On Monday and Tuesday, the bank bought few rubles, doing so only late on Tuesday to prevent the ruble from crashing past the 4,000 to the dollar.

Meanwhile, the central bank has been dipping into its reserves to buy rubles and prop up the nation's currency.

And the bank spent it to intervene in the markets and buy rubles for several weeks.