It's ironic, there's no other way to put it.

At the end of February, the West, imposing sanctions on Russia, froze the accounts of the Central Bank so that it could not intervene in the foreign exchange market in order to prevent an uncontrolled collapse of the ruble. And in the first few days, the ruble really collapsed.

Now everything was turned exactly 180 degrees. Russian monetary authorities, being unable to intervene, are trying to stop the strengthening of the ruble by all available means. Today the Ministry of Economic Development has acted with verbal interventions, saying that the peak of the ruble strengthening has come. A little later, the government reduced the requirement for the mandatory sale of foreign currency proceeds by exporters from 80% to 50%.

Obviously, the government does not benefit from such a strong ruble to form the budget as now, when the dollar has dropped below 60 rubles.