By Joice Alves
LONDON (Reuters) – The euro rose on Friday after Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some progress in Moscow’s talks with Ukraine.
Even if Putin provided no details, the euro rose 0.4% to $1.1043 minutes after Putin said in a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that talks continued practically on daily basis.
“There are certain positive shifts, negotiators on our side tell me,” Putin said, without elaborating.
The euro was 0.25% higher at $1.1023 as of 1225 GMT, after rising as high as $1.11215 on Thursday in a choppy day.
The euro has fallen almost 2% against the U.S. dollar in March after Russia started a military operation in Ukraine last month. But it was heading on Friday to its first weekly gains in five weeks.
“Although both parties are still quite some distance apart from compiling and signing a formal peace treaty, headlines suggest that ground is being made in trying to bring about a more peaceful resolution,” Simon Harvey, head of FX Analysis at Monex Europe.
This is the reason why euro saw some modest gains after Putin’s statement, he added.
After falling to its lowest level in almost two years on Monday amid rising stagflation worries arising from the Ukraine war, the euro also found some support on the European Central Bank’s announcement that it will phase out its stimulus, opening the door to an interest rate hike before the end of 2022.
The dollar rose 0.06% against a basket of peers to 98.418. It was still near a five-year high on the Japanese yen, up 0.7% to 116.88 yen as markets prepare for the Federal Reserve tightening after the release of strong U.S. inflation data.
Both the Fed and the Bank of Japan have policy meetings next week, but while the Fed is all but certain to hike rates from their pandemic low, the BOJ is set to remain an outlier.
Amid rising energy prices, commodity-linked Norwegian crown rose 0.7% versus the dollar to 8.8910 crowns.
The Ukraine war has also weighed on sterling, which has fallen 2.3% this month versus the dollar and hit a 16-month low on Friday, before rising 0.3% to $1.3117 after Putin’s statement.
Bitcoin rose 1.8% to $40,000. It had surged this week after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring the government to assess the risks and benefits of creating a central bank digital dollar.
(Reporting by Joice Alves; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Alison Williams)