Real question: are there any silver rubles in circulation as in pre-communist days?
Silver rubles were so much preferred that an old peasant saying went, “A thousand in paper, or eight hundred in silver, and the cow is yours.”
What’s to back up the value of the paper ruble? Does Russia have gold reserves (they should, they stole all of Spain’s during the Spanish civil war)?
A currency is also backed up by the strength of the national economy. That’s lacking in Putin’s Russia.
Do they still arrest people for trading in greenbacks as in Soviet times?
Or, as in the case of the US, ten aircraft carriers.