> If your competitors are also weakening—and if you believe you can tolerate the pain longer than they can—the calculus flips. Economic pressure that should drive compromise instead reinforces the logic of persistence.
I think everyone underestimates just how much misery Russia, and Russian citizens, can endure.
A "dead" centrally-planned economy can continue lurching forward like a zombie for a long, long time. No one should count on this ending the war any time soon.
I live in Dubai, UAE and I can see with my own eyes that the sanctions strategy doesn't work, here Russians buy whathever they like and send it to Russia. There are companies that do this. They hire workers from poor countries promising a good life here in Dubai and they send them in Ukraine to fight. To fight agains Russia we need to attack every nations that have deals with Russia. Let's sanction everyone who makes deals with Russia, let's really block everything that goes to Russia and then maybe the Russian economy with crash
Any insights (anecdotes) from those in Russia and willing to opine on whether the economy seems like its collapsing presently?
They managed to insulate their economy surprisingly well so far. Not that it is "good" but it also didn't tank entirely.
I'm skeptical how close they are to a dramatic change.
Remember the Economist Indicator - always take the opposite side of what Economist prints.
How does Russia have $73 billion dollars worth of debt. Who is buying Russian treasuries? Also how did the GDP grow by 1% in 2025, is that a function of the internal Defence spending activity?
Déjà vu …
Since Crimea Invasion
Russia’s Economy Is On the Brink of Collapse" – CNN Business, December 2014.
"The End of the Putin Era? Russia’s Economy Is Tanking" – Newsweek, December 2014.
"Russia Heading for Economic 'Colossal Collapse'" – BBC News (quoting Alexei Kudrin), December 2014.
"How the Oil Price Collapse Could Topple Putin" – The Guardian, 2015.
"Russia’s Economy Is a Mess" – The Atlantic, February 2015.
"Russia’s Coming Economic Collapse" – Forbes, June 2015.
Since Ukraine War
Post-Ukraine Invasion (2022–Present)
"The Russian Economy Is Heading for a Meltdown" – The Economist, March 2022.
"Biden: The Ruble Is Reduced to Rubble" – Associated Press (reporting on White House statements), March 2022.
"Russia Faces its Worst Economic Collapse Since the Fall of the Soviet Union" – Bloomberg, April 2022.
"The Implosion of the Russian Economy" – Foreign Affairs, July 2022.
"Russia’s Economy Is Dying a Slow Death" – Business Insider, 2023.
"Is Russia’s Economy On the Brink of Collapse? Why Trump Might Be Right" – The Guardian, September 2025.
"Stormy Weather Pummels Russia's Economy: Cracks Are Appearing" – CEPA, February 2026.
"The Russian Economy Is Finally Stagnating" – The Guardian, February 2026.
Edit for the good metaphors.
> It has entered what mountaineers call the death zone: the altitude above 8,000 metres at which the human body consumes itself faster than it can be repaired.
> Over the past four years the Russian economy has bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems... The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy.
> A recession is like fatigue: rest and you recover. Russia’s condition is like altitude sickness: the longer you stay, the worse it gets, regardless of rest.
> But Vladimir Putin is not only watching his own oxygen gauge. He is watching the other climbers.
Always a fan of the writing style the Economist promotes.
I wonder if the end of Russia as a world threat is something that benefits or hurts the US.
The US runs a trillion dollar war machine, a multi-trillion dollar military industrial complex. It needs to feed it. It needs enemies. At the very least, it needs a constant threat to justify its existence (even if it has to create those threats).
If Russia ceases to be a threat, does the US begin to hassle more countries? Does it increase the Police State, does domestic surveillance become more prevalent. Are we already seeing these things?
A legitimate Russian threat might actually be good for the world and the American people.
what does this do to the Russian citizens? is cost of everything going up to ridiculous levels?
It’s interesting, of course, but for example the Ukrainian budget depends on donations for about 60%, yet this dump doesn’t seem to rush to publish articles with equally loud headlines about Ukraine. Or about the US with its trillions in debt, or the UK, France, and most EU countries with huge debts exceeding their annual GDP.
I would add that it's really unclear, IMO, what the real state of the Russian economy is.
The main focus is on GDP growth, which indeed has been reported as decent - maybe a bit of a wobble recently but no more.
So, first of all, that number is kind of unverifiable. Hostile journalists have been silenced, independent institutions shattered or kicked out. Their GDP number might be accurate, but might also be inflated, and we'd never know. Russia is notorious for manipulating information for propaganda reasons and frankly I can't see why they wouldn't inflate their GDP prints. China was far more open when people were questioning its GDP and even then it was tea leaf prophecies.
Moreover, with Putin's (and incidentally Trump's) approach of never retreating and always doubling down, I'd expect Russia would act like it's business as usual until pretty much the day it collapses. As with the Titan sub, there will be some awkward creaking sounds then in one instant it will all go.
For the final straw, even if the GDP number is 100% right, increasingly it is driven by military spending. GDP is essentially the sum total of money spent in a country. And Russia is increasingly spending that money not on healthcare, schools, police, infrastructure and investments, and instead on military hardware being sent straight to be destroyed in Ukraine. You can do this for a little bit but, as the article points out, not forever, and mere GDP growth is not much of a sign of a strong economy.
There's just so much we don't know: if the GDP is real, what Russian gold reserves look like (apparently raided - but how much?), how their oil companies are holding up having siphoned every last Rouble meant for maintenance off to cash. Russia also lost something like an estimated 1.25M men. If for a back-of-the-envelope we assume half of Russia's prewar population is participating in labour force, that's almost 2% of the workforce permanently lost. And their loss rate ain't dropping.
EDIT some more caveats:
- GDP captures the official economy. It is unclear what the impact on the unofficial economy is, I can imagine larger than on the regular economy (but could make the opposite argument too).
- Even if Russia is not fudhing the final number, the incentives on individual surveyed subjects align with those of pumping GDP, especially in time of crisis - lower costs, higher income.
Russia‘s international reserves are at all time high at the moment (800B$), of which only 300B are frozen by sanctions. Doesn’t look like a sign of a death zone. The arguments for it are questionable:
>Consider the arithmetics of descent for the Kremlin. Russia’s defence sector now accounts for around 8% of GDP. Demobilising without falling into a crisis would require five conditions to be met simultaneously: credible security guarantees that satisfy the Kremlin’s threat perceptions (which in turn will determine the extent to which it rebuilds its military capabilities);
Likely result of a peace deal. Trump wants to sign it and focus on China, so some pragmatic arrangement to be expected.
> mass demobilisation with effective retraining programmes;
The easiest part. The scale of mobilization was relatively small compared to total workforce. Not sure why effective retraining sounds like a problem.
>at least partial sanctions relief for technology access;
Russia has gaps in electronics (can buy from China) and in aviation (sanctions likely to be lifted in exchange for opening transit routes). In software it is still ahead of Europe, having strong national players in AI, banking, marketplaces etc. It may need Western tech to roll out 5G, but given that they already plan it, they probably already have access to Chinese tech.
>a revolution in defence procurement that prioritises efficiency over budget absorption;
Not clear why this is relevant. The defense spending will wind down gradually, it is likely already more efficient than before the war.
> and a healthy ecosystem of small and mid-size firms capable of absorbing reallocated resources and boosting innovation.
Will likely happen as soon as tax relief will be affordable, i.e. in 1 or 2 years after the peace deal. Resilience of Russian SMEs is something developed over decades. It might happen that Dubai and South Caucasus Russian tech hubs will go home. Most importantly, there will be a huge amount of money spent on new territories similarly to infrastructure investments in Crimea, which will add few percentage of growth to GDP.
> The probability of all five converging is near zero.
This is the most interesting part of the article, but it left unexplained. Why?
Same story for 4 years long. "Russian economy is at the brink of a collapse." Yet it Somehow just keeps ok going year after year.
The truth is that the sanctions are only hurting the Eurozone more than Russia. Small minority (EU or the political west) cannot force meaningful sanctions on much larger group (BRICS). Unfortunately this is not the narrative anyone can say out loud lest they be labeled as "Putin's trolls" so the wishy-washy keeps on going on.
What is Europe/USA fueled by?
Debt. The Bubble.
Is that sustainable? I don’t think so.
What’s the point of the article? To prove the west’s superiority?
The only way is just to cede the land and move on. Keep the people alive. 100 years later one can renegotiate. This kind of copium hope wishing the economy collapse or something like Mongol collapse is just not practical. The longer this drag on, the lesser fertile men exist in Ukraine and the population recovery will take even longer while Russian outbirth in the long run. Sometime to win one has to abide by time. Joan or Arc and King Goujian of Yue demonstrated that principle well either by divine intervention or human vengeance. Russia is doing very well. You can check with your Russians or Northern China friends that see the conditions with their eyes and not western propaganda.
So several sources report this. I assume this may be more "realistic" than in the last 3 years ago or so.
My problem with this is that many of these "news media" have a certain propaganda spin. Yes, Russia's propaganda puts any other propaganda to shame, but that does not mean others don't use propaganda either. The most prevalent change is how suddenly in Europe, more debt will be made by upgrading arms. I am not saying this is not understandable, so I am not necessarily against that; in fact, Europeans need a nuclear arsenal under EU control anyway. But at the same time one should not blindly adopt propaganda used by others. One always has to look what happens to taxpayer's money or who finances something.
As a Ukrainian at war since day 1 – I don't buy it. They will sell their gas at discount to China until the very end. Military force is the only way to get them to the death zone.