The Ukrainian economy has already contracted enough that it would be considered a collapse after a period of sustained growth between 1999 and 2008, and intermittent growth afteward; however, Ukraine is being sustained by external support (not just military but economic and humanitarian aid) while Russia is getting aid from no one. (Ostensibly China is giving aid to Russia but I guarantee that behind the scenes they are extracting concessions that will further erode the long term economic and political viability of the Russian Federation in its current extents.) While I’ll agree Ukraine has played a good social media game that underplays the horrific effects this invasion has had on their population (including the outright abduction of children and child-bearing-age women who are no doubt intended to be used to bolster the native Russian population with an infusion of youth), the idea that the sanctions have had no impact on Russian citizens is a fabrication; Russia has very little in the way of native commercial industries and was enormously dependent upon Western goods, nor did it ever maintain large stockpiles of goods to sustain it for years of international sanctions.
Furthermore, while there are a lot of refugees who will eagerly return to Ukraine when and if it returns to a state of relative peace, Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of people in just the last few years who are almost certainly never going to return, notwithstanding that it was already in such catastrophic demographic collapse that it makes nations like Italy and Japan look viable in comparison. The only reason that Russia doesn’t look worse than these countries is because the average lifespan is so low compared to the longer lived older adult populations in other developed nations. I think there is reason to have confidence that in a post-conflict scenario the Ukraine could recover with a Marshall Plan-style aid program, Russia has no such support and no real reason anyone would invest beyond the ability to extract natural resources.
@LSLGuy’s characterization of Putin’s Russia as a nihilistic power is on point: Russia no longer has the military power to dominate even a relatively weak neighbor, much less a power like Poland or Germany; it no longer has the industrial might to even support its military and energy extraction industries; and it no longer holds much appeal for nations who once shoveled money at it in exchange for cheap oil and gas (and does not have the means to deliver it in bulk even if it found willing customers). Like an aging prostitute, all Russia has left to sell are cheap tricks and unprocessed natural resources at a fraction of the ‘pennies on the dollar’ that it was previously selling. Russia does, however, have the world’s second largest (presumably still somewhat functional) nuclear arsenal; an active bioweapons and radiotoxins program that, while not a strategic threat is clearly being deployed on an assassination basis with little reserve; and a pretty effective cyberwarfare and propaganda ops program. All Putin can really do to buoy Russia is to threaten everyone else, even nations that were previously neutral and that posed essentially no threat in order to amplify the impression to the Russian population that their nation is under siege. Putin is a master troll but he’s never had any long term plan beyond “Fuck around and find out,” and while that hasn’t gone as quickly catastrophic as many prophesied in the opening weeks of the Ukraine invasion, there is really no way that the Russian military is going to become stronger or more capable, while the Ukrainians are constantly asking for and now receiving increasingly more capable weapons and training along with a highly motivated mostly volunteer military with cultural memory of the wrongs done to Ukraine during the Soviet era.
Stranger