If you take Putin seriously he is saying he backs an interest rate hike. As a point of comparison, in Israel they just had an interest rate hike this year, and when people started struggling with loans and mortgages the auth-right government immediately blamed the central bank’s monetary policy.

Auth-right governments can never really fail at anything: economic troubles are the fault of the central bank, military troubles – the fault of the military, and so on. The sort of people who back these governments are very thirsty for this kool-aid, Putin is just meeting the high demand with supply.