Cautiously eyeing her fellow passengers, Anastasia clutched her handbag tighter than usual as she rode on a crowded bus home from her bank’s branch in northern Moscow.
This 70-year-old pensioner is now regularly withdrawing money because she hears whispers that Vladimir Putin may grab the savings of ordinary people and plough them into his endless war, or use them to prop up his creaking economy.
‘I scoffed at my babushka [grandmother] stashing her roubles under her mattress,’ said the modestly well-off retired senior civil servant.
‘Now I’m doing the same. I am so concerned and, honestly, scared.’
This time she withdrew just under £1,000-worth
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