Commentary There are numerous headlines showing the surprising recovery of the Russian ruble against the U.S. dollar and the euro. By the first week of April, the Russian currency had recovered all the losses against the greenback and the euro area currency. Obviously, there’s an important difference that needs to be considered. Massive capital controls were implemented in Russia after the heavy sanctions of the West and no Russian citizen or business can sell rubles to buy dollars, euros, pounds, or yen. It’s impossible to know what would have happened to the Russian currency if capital controls hadn’t been implemented, but we know that no Russian citizen can exchange local currency for international ones and very unlikely at the official rate. In essence, the Russian ruble “traded” price doesn’t reflect an abrupt change in demand, just the effect of capital controls. We don’t know what exchange rate is used in …