Ford announced that it will cut production and about 1,000 jobs at factories in Russia in response to falling demand and deteriorating value of the ruble.

The largest cut will be in the Sollers plant near St. Petersburg which will lose about 700 jobs.

Ford builds the Focus and Mondeo models there.

The change will happen next June.

Ford has not announced the scale of reduction in output but said that sales in Russia have dropped by 21 percent to 10,556 vehicles this year.

The Russian auto market has been declining even before the Ukrainian crisis.

The ruble also has lost 13 percent of its value against the dollar in the last 12 months, and it was the second-worst-performing major emerging-market currency in the first quarter this year.

The drop prompted Renault, which controls Russia’s market-leading Lada brand, to raise prices by about three percent in both January and March this year.

Daimler, on the other hand, is examining whether to build Mercedes-Benz cars in Russia as part of a plan to widen the automaker’s global production capacity and assemble more vehicles near the markets where they’re sold.

Most companies are watching out for any trade sanctions that may be imposed by the US or the EU against Russia.