Renault freezes Russian auto project

French automaker Renault has frozen a project to make commercial vehicles with Russian company Zil because of the fall of the ruble, a Renault spokeswoman said on Wednesday. "Due to the weakening of the ruble, Renault has frozen this project at this time and tries to find a solution to do the project profitably,", the spokeswoman said. Renault was studying whether it should make commercial vehicles in Russia and Zil offered one way of doing this, she said, but no investment had yet been made. The ruble has fallen sharply against the euro, partly because of an underlying slowdown of the Russian economy and more recently because of the crisis over Ukraine, according to AFP.