"We were trying to send a message ... that we think that the economy is resilient to new sanctions. A fiscal consolidation that would allow the deficit to be financed entirely domestically just in case new sanctions are imposed on Russian government debt. But there was still more work to do in terms of the clean-up, Lindow said. "Russia has had a history of having current account surpluses but a certain amount of that was lost to capital flight. And that's diminished significantly with the closure of some of these banks."

Source: Economic Times January 30, 2018 09:33 UTC