Ukraine
https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2025/02/...achalo-gotovitsya-kkrizisu-vekonomike-a154881
It is/was in full swing. Russia is propping up almost every industry in the country. Cant do that, double defense spending, lowered revenues from oil exporting and continue to pay pensions, run 21% inflation, mortgage rates above 40% ( and thats if you put HALF DOWN ), construction of new residences down 25-30% ( conservative estimates ) and have a 4 trillion ruble deficit.
They have been raiding the NWF ( National Welfare Fund ) for over a year now. its out of cash. All it holds currently is gold and Chinese Yuan. Thats it.
The collapse of the old Soviet Union was brought about by the same scenario- Russia tried to keep pace with US on defense spending and literally buried themselves in spending money they didnt have or couldnt pay back what they borrowed.
Its repeating itself again.
If the Russian economy is truly on life support, it's going to take years to recover and rebuild all the cumulative destruction, decay and countless trillions lost from oil/natural gas revenues, massive foreign debt owed to China and India, a very shaky, unstable currency deficit and most major sectors of your overall economy drowning or near-collapse, and that also means even if there's a negotiated cease-fire, it will still years and long past when Trump is a memory where the Russian economy and military will begin to remotely recover from being mangled over the last 3 years.
This wasnt/isn't a short war where RU's economic and military losses as well as losing close to one million men can be sufficiently replaced, compensated and re-armed where they even close to.same threat they were pre-2022 invasion and that dire predicament strongly precludes invading other countries. I want to reiterate that again just to underscore that grim, difficult ardous scenario we're discussing here. Some economic, geopoliitical, or military experts have predicted it might take a decade or two for Russia to fully recover from the immense, enormous losses its suffered to only obtain 20% of Ukrainian territory. After the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and our withdrawal from South Vietnam which lead to ARVN's military/civilian regime's collapse by April 1975, it wasn't for another 20 years almost that we were fully involved in a foreign, overseas conflict and it really wasnt until Reagan administration in the early 80's that we fully and completely transitioned to a more stable, peacetime economy overrun by stagflation, cost of living and goods increases across the board and OPEC oil shocks which put the final nails in the old New Deal coalition infrastructure which had been a powerful, influential fiscal force since the 1930's. It also led to the worst economic recession in most western countries seen since the Great Depression in the late 70's.
As difficult as it was here, in U.K. it got really bad by 1975/76 with labor unrest/militancy, a 3-day work week, mass power shortages, IRA paramilitaries began a new bombing campaign in northern Ireland, interest rates sky-rocketing and Callaghan's Labour regime was forced to set up arbitrary price and wage controls, which didnt endear them to their powerful TUC allies who are and remain the backbone of the Labour Party, but even moreso back then. Then it all finally hit a proverbial brick wall when Callaghan advised Ford Dagenban London plant managers to only offer a 5% wage increase and union leaders rejected it and eventually got IIRC, a 25% pay increase which lead to other major industrial strikes with lorry drivers in Hull, gravediggers union in Liverpool, union hospital workers, nurses and doctors went on strike in many British cities. It's called the "Winter of Discontent" from a famous silloquoy line in Shakespeare's Richard III by British analysts, political commentators and historians. It was a major factor into why Labour didn't return back to power for nearly 20 years and its idealogical, social framework and platform was by then, considerably different.