When Elvira Nabiullina came to the conference in black immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she caused a wave of speculation.

Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina wanted to resign immediately after the invasion, but Putin allegedly asked her to stay and appointed her for another five-year term, four people familiar with the discussions said, quoted by Deutsche Welle.

In her second term as governor, she is close to President Putin. Before heading the Bank of Russia, she was Putin’s economic adviser, a position she took after serving as Minister of Economy and Trade.

Like former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Nabiulina communicated through the clothes and brooches she wore. The migratory bird brooch symbolized the coming of winter and the freezing of a key interest, while the V-shaped brooch symbolized the steady recovery of the economy.

The fact that she appeared dressed in black and without a single brooch was interpreted as such; some said he disapproved of the invasion of Ukraine, some that he bemoaned the Russian economy, others that he defied Putin by saying he disagreed with his war.

Nabiullina is no stranger to crises. She has seen the Russian economy through a series of shocks since she took over as head of Russia’s central bank in 2013, including facing Western sanctions following the annexation of Crimea.

She was praised for cleaning up the banking system from corruption. Hundreds of banking licenses were revoked, including those of banks previously considered untouchable, halving the number of Russian banks (to about 500).

When the Russian ruble collapsed against the US dollar in 2014 amid falling oil prices and Western sanctions, Nabiullina raised interest rates to more than 17%, helping Russia return to growth and reduce inflation. Major and influential Western publications, including Euromoney and The Banker, praised her as one of the best central bankers.

Tatar woman Nabiullina comes from a lower class of society. Father was a driver, and mother worked at a factory. Graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University.

At the height of the 2020 pandemic, when the government urged people to self-isolate, Nabiullina wore a pin in the shape of a house. Then there was a dove pin after the interest rate cut announcement. The pause icon represented a freeze on interest rate cuts, while the hawk pin symbolized higher interest rates.

Nabiullina was sanctioned by Canada and Australia for close ties with the leaders of the Russian regime. It faces sanctions that have frozen most of the central bank’s $630 billion (€696 billion) in foreign exchange reserves, severely limiting its ability to deal with the economic crisis. But this is not the first crisis that Russia has gone through with her at the head of the central bank.

In 2014, Russia was rocked by two economic shocks: the collapse of oil prices caused by increased production in the United States and Saudi Arabia’s refusal to cut production, which led to a decrease in Russia’s oil revenues, as well as economic sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea.

Russia went through a painful adjustment and the economy shrank for a year and a half. But by mid-2017, Nabiullina achieved something that just a few years ago seemed far-fetched: inflation below 4 percent, the lowest in the country’s post-Soviet era.

Nabiullina participated in international meetings, including the annual Federal Reserve Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and regular meetings with central bank governors hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (the “Bank of Central Banks”).

She is described as personable, focused, always well-prepared, a proponent of market forces (despite her Soviet-era economics education), and a fan of history and opera. Born in Ufa, a city more than 1,000 km east of Moscow known for its heavy industry, she attended Moscow State University, one of the country’s most prestigious schools. She is married to a fellow college student, also an economist.

She “directed” Russia’s bank reserves to gold, euros and Chinese yuan. During his tenure, the dollar’s share of reserves fell from 40 percent to about 11 percent. Even after sanctions froze the bank’s foreign reserves, the country has “sufficient” reserves of gold and yuan, she told lawmakers.

Other sanctions protections included an alternative to SWIFT, the global banking messaging system developed in recent years. The bank also changed its payment infrastructure to handle card transactions so that even the rejection of Visa and Mastercard would have minimal effect.