Today, Turkey’s Energy Ministry announced an agreement in principle on switching some payments for Russian natural gas out of dollars and into rubles. This is a follow- on from last week, when Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met for several hours with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Sochi. There, Erdogan agreed that Ankara would start paying for some natural gas imports from Russia in rubles. However, the currency of payment was only part of a larger arrangement, as they signed a roadmap for economic cooperation, designed to increase bilateral trade to the equivalent of $100 billion a year.