Putin addresses Russia's big inflation problems and demands change

On August 22nd, Vladimir Putin spoke about the financial challenges facing the Russian economy in a televised meeting with government officials in which he demanded change. 

Inflationary risks in Russia have been on the rise and Putin explained that the country’s central bank and government need to keep the situation under control Reuters reported. 

Surging prices have the potential to erode the standard of living in the country at a time when the Russian budget is under increasing pressure from the cost of war in Ukraine according to Reuters.

"The scale and complexity of the tasks we are solving, and continue to solve, are of a really exceptional nature," Putin commented according to a Reuters translation.

Putin put on a brave face and said that the situation was stable but that it needed to be monitored and decisions about how to curve future inflation needed to be made quickly. 

The Russian President also called on the government and central bank to use the tools that they had available to them and provided examples of what each should be doing. 

"Work is needed, among other things, on limiting unproductive, speculative demand, controlling the outflow of capital, monitoring the behavior of the main participants of the financial market,” Putin said, adding they needed to “use the tools at their disposal.”

The Russian ruble is currently the third worst-performing currency this year according to Bloomberg and it just underwent a major dip that saw 100 rubles equal to just $1 dollar. 

Bloomberg noted that the ruble's crash forced an “extraordinary meeting” of the country’s central bank, during which it raised Russia’s interest rates by 3.5 percentage points to 12%- in order to shore up the currencies stability. 

Officials also moved to impose new capital control measures and requested exporters sell the revenue they make in foreign currencies, a sign that things in Russia really are not going well.