We have previously described how Putin has been scrambling to enmesh Russia in tight bilateral commodity-based trade with both China and India, and now it is Russia's turn to announce it would seek its own "national payment settlement system" following last week's surprising and unmandated service halts by both Visa and MasterCard, which as Vladimir Putin said earlier today, will be a "bid to reduce economic dependence on the West."

Putin observed, cited by AFP, that Russia is aggressively looking to trim its dependence on the west for payment settlement: "In countries such as Japan and China these systems work, and work very well," Putin told lawmakers in televised remarks.