MOSCOW, June 12 -- Elvira Nabiullina, the woman who has run Russia's central bank since 2013 and held the ruble together through four years of the most aggressive sanctions in modern history, took sick leave this month and missed an economic forum. By the end of the week, reading the Western press, one would conclude she had been purged, that martial law was imminent, and that her resignation would be treated as treason.

The confirmed facts are modest. Nabiullina did not attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 4, where she had been scheduled to speak on two panels, and the central bank's press service told the Russian outlet RBC she was on sick leave, The Moscow Times reported. The State Duma's Andrei Makarov, mode...