At this point, my knowledge of the situation is from watching the daily news. I know the euro exchange rate is better than the dollar one. I know Russians
have lots of incentive to hide income and keep things off the books or under
mattresses. Not to mention that banks are still unevenly reliable.
DoreneC --- Except for maybe Sperbank and Alfa-Bank, Russia does not have a banking sector. It has a hiding-money sector. There are banks in Russia with capitalization of $1,000, usually set up by one company.
The substitute for the banking sector for big business is stashing money offshore. Right now, there are huge construction projects going up all over Moscow. Huge sums of money are being invested. Where is this money coming from? Nobody knows! From Cyprus, from somebody.