The Russian ruble has been sliding for weeks against the dollar and is at its weakest since the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

It saw a drop of nearly 30% against the greenback in 2023, making it among the worst-performing currencies, according to The Wall Street Journal. Only the currencies of Turkey, Nigeria, and Argentina have fared worse against the dollar.

“The main source of ruble depreciation and inflation acceleration is loose monetary policy,” claimed Maxim Oreshkin, an economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, per the WSJ.

In response to inflation and a weak ruble, the Russian central bank raised interest rates by 3.5% during an emergency meeting on Tuesday, reported The New York Times. The move seemed to have arrested the currency’s freefall, at least temporarily.

The ruble’s value and stability have been points of pride for Russia throughout the country’s history. It was a way to highlight Russia’s status within the hierarchy of European nations, said Princeton professor Ekaterina Pravilova.

“It was a matter of obsession,” Pravilova told the WSJ. “It was a barometer not just of Russian well-being but also of how European Russia is. It was prestige, it was a matter of honor.”

A weakened ruble makes imports more expensive for ordinary Russians. It also makes the country less attractive to immigrant labor, and Russia is facing a worker shortage.

While acknowledging the ruble’s tumble, the chairman of the Duma’s financial markets committee, Anatoly Aksakov, said that what mattered to ordinary Russians was quality of life, which he claimed was improving.

“I monitor the ruble-dollar ratio for work, while the majority of the Russian population do not care about the issue,” Aksakov said, according to RT.

“People get paid. The republic lives a full life, there are smiles on people’s faces and there is no stress over the dollar exchange rate. … I have never seen such a state of positive development in modern Russia after the Soviet Union. In this sense, the country is in a positive trend of its development,” Aksakov claimed.