But Nabiullina’s reputation has suffered. She has been criticised for failing to anticipate a war that experts say has been years in the making, while questions have been asked about her failure to honour a pledge to resign if capital controls were imposed.

The jury is out on other measures such as a demand for “unfriendly nations” to pay for Moscow’s gas in roubles. Some experts believe the move will backfire because it allows buyers to renegotiate the purchase price. Others have called it a masterstroke that will prompt a scramble for roubles that strengthens the currency.

Fellow financiers also question how long she will allow herself to be associated with Putin’s war. In Russia there is a divide between the technocrats and financial experts whose job it is to keep the economy on the straight and narrow and are opposed to the war, and the security thugs tasked with containing unrest, disobedience, and dissent, who enthusiastically back the invasion in the hope of acquiring more power, money and influence.

Nabiullina is said to be torn between her opposition to a war that has enacted huge damage on the Russian economy and a sense of duty to help ordinary Russians.

Still, it is obvious that her faith and allegiance have been severely tested by the invasion, which is why all diplomatic channels should be opened to her. Nabiullina’s defection would not just be a huge propaganda coup, it would also further destabilise the Russian economy.

Chubais has courageously shown the way. She should also be reassured by the actions of Boris Lvin, who resigned as a senior adviser to Russia’s representative at the World Bank, because “I can no longer associate myself with my government”, and Oleg Anisimov, a senior Russian climate delegate, who said he could not find “any justification” for the war. The fate of Beseda and Gavrilov, along with the mysterious disappearance of Zolotov and Shoigu may provide further food for thought.

Whichever way you cut it, Nabiullina is enabling the invasion, and as former Ukrainian central banker Valeria Gontareva told the Financial Times, one day that may mean “sitting in The Hague with all these bandits.” Perhaps that thought will help her, and indeed other high profile figures in Moscow, decide whose side to be on in Putin’s wretched war.