Adam Tooze: Why Russia’s Economy Is Performing Better Than the West Had Hoped

Cameron Abadi

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Russia’s Central Bank took the extraordinary step of raising its key interest rate by 3.5 percentage points earlier this week. The move came after the value of the Russian currency had fallen to catastrophic levels; the ruble, prior to the interest rate hike, was worth less than 1 U.S. cent. The currency crisis, and the central bank’s response, offered a new window into an economy that, more than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was faring better than many in the West had hoped—but worse than many in Russia had imagined.