Now that Vladimir Putin’s fifth presidential term has begun under the snow of Red Square, only one step is missing: the resignation of the government, in view of the appointment of a new executive for the political cycle that is reopening in Russia. It will probably be a formality, because the reconfirmation of the team of technocrats led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin seems obvious.
However, there is an apparently independent figurestrong only in his expertise, which in Moscow is becoming even more essential than Mishustin himself: his name is Elvira Nabiullinawill turn 59 in October, and is governor of the Russian central bank since eleven. Because Nabiullina brings together some characteristics that make it unique in the vertical of Moscow’s power. As unique as it is difficult to frame and therefore even more effective.
First, in an establishment populated by men born in the espionage apparatus, in the St. Petersburg mafia of the 1990s, or by military and business oligarchs, the head of the Bank of Russia stands out for its genre: she is a woman, the only one to manage some form of substantial power and also to be able to defend it for a long time (last year she was reconfirmed for the third mandate).
Secondly Nabiullina seems to have an almost incredible freedom to criticize power: with words, with gestures and even with sartorial choices. This makes her an even rarer specimen in human phenomenology in and around the Kremlin. She continues to have surprising room for maneuveras we also had in the most delicate moments of the recent past.
Everyone remembers his appearance at one end of Putin’s six-meter table at the beginning of the war, while the ruble collapsed on the markets and three hundred billion euros of Russian reserves were frozen by the G7. Nabiullina sat stunned, ashen in a black suit. If it wasn’t the language of dissent, everything in his body expressed discouragement at the Kremlin’s choices. And she knew that the photos of that day would go around the world, maybe she wanted it. She was counting on the fact that they would arrive under the eyes of her Western colleagues with whom she has always had friendly relations: for example Christine Lagarde, the French president of the European Central Bank who knows Nabiullina’s passion for the language and literature of the Alps.
Yet the sign of Nabiullina’s actions is different. Not only she never resigned: his maneuvers on rates and his advice in closing the borders to the free movement of capital, in those days at the beginning of the war, they saved the rubletherefore also the Russian economy and Putin’s campaign of aggression against Ukraine. In fact, Putin did not fire her; he reconfirmed it.
The same deadly ambivalence by Nabiullina continues to return in recent months. Last December 15th he raised interest rates to 16%, very close to the historic high for Russia, adding vitriolic words for Putin’s war economy. He did it in a press conference similar, apparently, to those of his colleagues from democracies: almost free questions, almost sincere answers. «Think of the economy as a car – Nabiullina said that day -. If we try to drive faster than we can go, sooner or later the engine will burn out and we won’t get far. We can go yes, maybe even fast; but not for long”.
It was the central banker’s way of saying that the conversion of the economy in favor of the military-industrial apparatus in Russia would clash with the country’s limits: there are not enough plants, not enough workers can be found, there is a risk of rapid overheating . Nevertheless Nabiullina’s restrictive monetary policy in fact, once again, helps stabilize the war machine of Putin precisely because it cools inflation. And the dictator implicitly thanked his banker. Putin acknowledged that an inflation problem exists, but that “the Bank of Russia and the government are doing everything necessary.”
Nabiullina was even closer to burning went so far as to criticize what in Russia is a sort of “110% bonus” aimed at making war popular – or at least acceptable – for the population. Various categories of Russian citizens, especially military personnel, are now entitled to subsidies that reduce the cost of mortgages by more than half. If maintained over the next two years, that measure risks costing the equivalent of ten billion euros and in fact real estate credit in Russia is exploding. But Nabiullina attacked this measure, the flagship of Putin’s social policies. “The subsidized mortgages increase house prices – he said – and such massive programs end up being paid for by taxpayers who do not benefit from them (i.e. the poorest, ed.)”.
In Russia you go to prison for much less. Nevertheless Putin does not touch Nabiullina, because he needs his expertise. And she continues not to leave, letting it be known abroad that he only does it to protect the Russians from the economic consequences of the war. Whatever you really think, his skillful management of the central bank strengthens the Russian economy and makes war possible. There is so much ambiguity in her choices that it has even divided democracies: the Americans, British, Canadians and Australians have put Elvira Nabiullina under sanctions, but the European Union, Switzerland and Japan have not.
Nazi Germany had Hjalmar Schacht, the head of the Reichsbank also respected at the Bank of England; Schacht dared to criticize Hitler’s policies, yet he collaborated with the war effort almost to the end. And Nabiullina is certainly not Schacht. But she maintains her style as an independent woman even nowTogether, guarantor and prisoner of the system from which she never wanted to escape.
