Last September Vladimir Putin starred in what may have been 2025’s dullest televised event. Flanked by officials and military personnel at the Eastern Economic Forum, the Russian president watched a procession of functionaries explain via videolink how they—and their railway, freight yard, hospital or university—were serving the motherland. As a sanctions-squeezed Russia struggles to defeat Ukraine, the broadcast on state TV was meant to reassure viewers that there was nothing to fear, and that their president remained firmly in control. But as the feed lurched from a motorway bridge to an airport terminal to a laboratory while Putin looked on expressionlessly, the effect was anything but dynamic.

Most viewers’ eyes will have glazed over long before the 33-minute mark, when the camera cut to two besuited men standing behind a lectern. The one who did most of the talking was tubby, balding and visibly nervous: he flapped his arms every time he inhaled, like an anxious penguin. There was an echo on the line, and it must have been hard for Putin to follow what he was saying. But this, at last, was something worth hearing.

The man, a Moldovan fugitive named Ilan Shor, had created a cryptocurrency pegged to the rouble called A7A5, giving Russian companies, oligarchs and government agencies a much-needed financial bridge to the outside world. It had, he said, already enabled more than $100bn-worth of trade. By bypassing the traditional banking system, it offered a way around Western sanctions.