Thank you for this article and this perspective.

Recently, Vladimir Solovyov blamed the West for the rouble collapse, which he attributed to the sanctions imposed by the EU, the US, and other allies in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He accused the Russian Central Bank of being incompetent and indifferent to the people's suffering, and demanded that it explain why the rouble exchange rate has soared so high that "they're laughing at us abroad". He also said that this was a kind of financial nuclear bomb that was falling on Russia.

Some analysts have suggested that the rouble collapse is partly due to the cost of spending in the parts of Ukraine that were annexed by Putin last fall. Anatoly Aksakov, a member of Russia's parliament, said that the price of Russian oil also affected the rouble exchange rate, but the spending in the "new territories" also played a role. However, others have argued that Russia's economic recovery has been hampered by its anti-Western and isolationist rhetoric, and that its aggression towards Ukraine has backfired on its own interests.