MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday his government did not plan to issue orders to domestic exporters to sell their foreign-currency earnings to support the rouble, which suffered a dramatic collapse earlier this week.

Putin also told an end-of-year news conference that the central bank should have stopped its forex market interventions a long time ago and that if it had, it would not have had to raise its key interest rate in an emergency move this week.

Copyright Reuters, 2014