[alexvoda]

Most of the hardships of that period were selfinflicted.

You may want to believe Yeltsin was a US puppet all you want.

That does not change the fact that when the USSR fell, and nations had to compete on an international market, the industry of all Warsaw pact nations was utterly uncompetitive.

That does not change that there is corruption in all levels of Russian administration, and for all this time they have been a drain on Russian people and its economy.

Putin just pivoted a balanced but failing state into a petrostate with him as the head mafioso.

Want to not be easily destabilised? Choose a more reliable and accountable government. Russia had some chances for that. Now Putin has enshrined in law his rulership until his death.

[inglor_cz]

History repeats itself. The bout of instability that is about to come as a result of this ill-advised, unwinnable war is self-inflicted too.

The Russians could have carried on with the previous hybrid war strategy, buying off politicians in the West, spreading their narratives, not-so-secretly augmenting the strange DNR and LNR entities in their chronic war with Ukraine, helping the Germans and others become ever more dependent on cheap Russian natural gas etc.

But they had to go all in with 200 000 soldiers and try to conquer a big country that hates them and would be uncontrollable even if they actually managed to take it.