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Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Thursday, March 24th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

Vladimir Putin has thrown a wrench into energy markets. He wants his gasp buyers to pay in

rubles. We'll also hear from writer Tim Judah. He's in Kiev. He'll tell us who has it flood the

capital. Plus, the FT's Olaf Storbeck talks about his scoop on Deutsche Bank and his relationship

with Archiegos' capital management. What wasn't known is that at the same time, Archiegos

had quietly built a large stake in Deutsche and had become one of the biggest shareholders in

I'm Joanna Gao, in for Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Oil prices jumped higher yesterday, after exports from a crucial pipeline on Russia's

Black Sea coast were completely halted. The Moscow-based group that runs the pipeline

blamed storm damage. Markets also worry that Russia may further interrupt energy supplies,

while US President Joe Biden is in Europe to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia's president Vladimir Putin rattled gas markets with an announcement that he will

start demanding his European gas buyers pay in rubles. The move boosted the Russian currency,

which has been under pressure because of Western sanctions. Here's the FT's industry reporter,

Harry Dempsey. So the key thing which we're trying to establish is whether the option to pay in

rubles is included in the contracts or not. And if it isn't, this could have quite big ramifications

because Russia will have to ask European customers to renegotiate the contracts. And that would give

an opening for European utilities and other buyers to potentially buy less volumes of Russian gas

and end the contracts earlier, for example. So it will open a bit of a can of worms, to be honest.

...