Transferring Russia to a military framework, fuelling public aggressive sentiments, which at the first stage of the war against Ukraine gave an unexpected growth effect, very quickly led to adverse consequences and threatens to end in economic stagnation, a catastrophic undermining of defence capabilities, and a deep political crisis. Russia is devouring itself in overstrain.
There is a catastrophic lack of resources for everything. Long-standing systemic problems turn into crises and threaten catastrophe. Saturation of the part of the population, which was engaged in military and military-industrial purposes, with money-fuelled consumer demand, which, in the absence of a sufficient number of goods, spun the flywheel of inflation. Therefore, the Central Bank of Russia was forced to again raise the discount rate by two positions.
An overheated economy, saturated with defence orders, which had been predicted to grow rapidly, began to fail.
According to the most optimistic forecasts, the economy next year will slow down to almost zero growth, inflation will almost double the forecast, and access to imported goods will continue to decrease. This is the official forecast of the Central Bank. After the optimistic 2023, when the economy grew by 3.6% alongside the crisis-ridden 2022, and expectations of similar parameters in 2024, the economy is predicted to slow down by 7-8 times in the following years. Therefore, the growth of investments and capital investments will be zero. Households will begin to suffer from rapid inflation.
The rapid decline in the birth rate, which worries the official authorities, will only deepen. The lack of human resources, which the authorities urgently redirect to the war, does not allow us to expect a solution to the problem in the future.
The creeping offensive in Donbas comes at a very heavy price for Russia. The public is full of appeals from the military, who were tricked into signing a contract and immediately thrown into ‘meat’ assaults. The bifurcation of the information space into the official triumphantly-relational one, in which Russia grows every day by centimetres of territory, and the public one, where soldiers talk about hopeless ‘meat’ assaults on private channels, undermines the official picture of the world. There are still plenty of people who want to “order the Khokhols”, but there is a catastrophic lack of those who are ready to do it even for a lot of money.
To remove the threat of undermining trust in official propaganda, the State Duma adopted legislative changes, which prohibit soldiers at the front from using smartphones. The official punishment is arrest by the commander’s decision for 10-20 days. De facto, it will be a “pit” with humiliation, beatings and a one-way ticket to a ‘meat’ storm.
Now Putin is trying to support the pace of the creeping offensive with everything at hand: from the newly contracted to the deficient wounded and strategic reserves. What the country will do after these reserves are completely destroyed, no one seems to know. They hope for the traditional “maybe” or for the fact that if the offensive stalls, a bet on freezing the war or another round of nuclear blackmail will play out.
The only point of growth remains a sixfold (compared to pre-war 2020) increase in state expenditures on the expansion of cemeteries. Only in 2023, these expenses doubled, compared to the first year of the special operation. The “offensive” year of 2024 promises to break all mortality records since the Second World War.
However, an even bigger problem is getting the body to the cemetery. Thousands of Russian soldiers rot on the battlefields, no one takes them away for years, even in the so-called liberated territories. No bodies, no problems with payments. The collection of body bags surpassed other scarce positions on the front.
Since Putin declares that he is not going to stop, at the current pace of Russian advance it will take at least five more years to completely capture four regions with projected losses of 1.5 million people. Considering that Russia has already lost about half a million in the war in Ukraine in killed and maimed, it will be impossible to fix the demographic crisis.
Meanwhile, black swans, and even predicted problems, cover Russia one after another. In the six months since 1 January, 5.9 million hectares of forest burned in Russia, which is more than, for example, the entire territory of Croatia (5.6 million).
The territories of the autonomous national federal subjects were the most affected. 2 million hectares burned in Yakutia. Buryatia was extremely affected. This year, due to forest fires, a state of emergency was introduced in ten regions. In recent years, the number of forest protection workers has decreased 10 times. Forest fires can be extinguished by nothing and no one.
Mass blackouts covered the country. Whole regions periodically find themselves without electricity and water during the heat. In addition to power outages, there is no Internet and mobile communications. The reason is the catastrophic wear and tear of critical and energy infrastructure. Without funds for modernization, a new wave of housing and economic apocalypse awaits Russia in the winter of 2024-2025.
The collapse of air transport actually “broke” transport connections within the country. Attempts to circumvent sanctions, to stamp replicas of parts turned flights by Russian airlines into Russian roulette. Since the start of the war, the number of technical incidents involving Sukhoi Superjet aircraft (a domestic aircraft made up 100% of imported parts) has more than doubled. From 134 in 2021 to 289 in 2023. Last year, the number of incidents increased by as much as 59%.
In general, the overheating of Russia is felt in everything. Due to insufficient resources and obsession with unattainable goals, the system continues to self-destructively devour itself…
