The Ruble should not strengthen too much more for the rest of the year, but not really because of anything the government will try and do, although they officially state they want a weaker Ruble. If they slash interest rates, that would only make a difficult inflation scenario that much worse, the economy would be in danger of overheating. What will likely happen for the last four months is what has started to happen over the last month and a half in world markets. Investors will seek to trade in some of their overseas investments and repatriate their money back into U.S. Treasuries and the like and will show less aggressiveness towards emerging markets fixed income, including Russia. This, combined with an increase in the value of imports vs. exports will help reign in the Ruble as the year draws to an end.