Moscow

FOR one of the rouble's most prescient forecasters, six more years of Vladimir Putin will mean that the currency's back-to-back annual gains are about to hit the buffers.

"After the Russian presidential election, the market will have digested the story of Russia exiting recession," said Sebastien Barbe, the Paris-based head of emerging market research and strategy at Credit Agricole CIB. Traders will turn their attention to "the difficulty that Putin - as the old-new president - will face in upgrading the growth model", he said.