Lagarde asked Russia’s Siluanov to tell Putin war harms prosperity, sources say

This is a notable moment of central-bank diplomacy spilling into geopolitics: Lagarde, whose mandate is monetary stability, used a closed-door IMF-adjacent setting to push a message framed around economic growth rather than sanctions or legal pressure. The fact that Siluanov understood the remarks directly, rather than through a filtered channel, gives the exchange more weight than a routine communiqué. The open question is whether such quiet, growth-focused appeals carry any traction with Moscow when the formal diplomatic track remains frozen, and whether similar back-channel framing appears at future IMF gatherings.