The problems of the Russian transformation are strongly related to the policy model adopted by the chief financial regulator, which in the case of this article is the Central Bank of Russia. It is argued here that the policy followed by the CBR is obsolete and rooted in the 1990s, and not up to date with the needs of the current economic conditions. These conditions are specific only to Russia and deserve the name of a “small cold war”. The CBR continues to pursue a liberalisation policy based on concepts borrowed from the West. Their core is a complete liberalisation of the international currency flows, at the expense of protecting the domestic market from international speculative capital, and at the price of encouraging capital flow away from Russia. At the same time this policy has managed to discourage long term domestic investments.