Tide out on island of stability

2008:

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Russian minister offered to mitigate the world credit crisis with the help of Russia’s reserves. Kudrin stated that Russia was an “island of stability in the sea of the world crisis.”

“Investors will continue to invest billions of dollars in the rising Russian economy. Stock market crises and their consequences will not be utterly negative for us,” Kudrin said.

2009:

Russia's economy shrank by a staggering 23.2 per cent in the first three months of the year compared with the previous quarter, as the country's industry buckled under the pressures of the global economic crisis, government figures showed Friday. Russia's economic output declined by 9.5 per cent compared with a year earlier, the Federal State Statistics Service said Friday...