Russia defaulted on its foreign-currency sovereign debt for the first time in a century, the culmination of ever-tougher Western sanctions that shut down payment routes to overseas creditors, reported from  Bloomberg.

For months, the country found paths around the penalties imposed after the Kremlin's military action in Ukraine. But at the end of the day on Sunday, the grace period on about $100 million of snared interest payments due May 27 expired, a deadline considered an event of default if missed.

It would be Russia's first major default since the years following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The country last defaulted on its foreign currency debt in 1918, when Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin refused to recognize the obligations of the deposed tsar's regime.

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