The basic monetary unit of Russia and Belarus, with the symbol ₽ or written as RUB.
From Russian rubl', possibly from Old Norse rubl (payment), or from Russian rubit' (to break, chop), referring to pieces of silver that were broken off larger ingots for trade. The word appears in English records by the 16th century.
The ruble's value has crashed and recovered multiple times in Russian history—most dramatically after the Soviet collapse in 1991 when people needed wheelbarrows of rubles just to buy bread, worse than many African countries experienced.
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