This is an interesting PR as there were some who said that prior to sanctions the economy might not break over 0% GDP for this year if the sanctions came in which hurts badly the general population as the economy has been struggling in a recession for the last year. Inflation was also anticipated to be in the 5-6% range.

16:44 HSBC cuts Russian GDP growth forecast to 0.6% in 2014, to 1.2% in 2015