Russia is in its death throes. They boast as if they were a force to be reckoned with, both as a player in international economy and in terms of their military power, often conflating the two in a thoroughly disturbing manner. The harsh truth is that they never had a particularly large economy in the first place, and what's left of it is rapidly imploding. What's more, their supposedly mighty army is taking a beating in the war they started against Ukraine, and their forces are now struggling to even make a dent along the new front they opened up in the northeast, in a desperate attempt to retake some initiative in their failed invasion of a friendly, democratic neighboring country.
Russians like to think of themselves as an actor in the global arena, but they are failing miserably to act even locally. Russia is rapidly making itself irrelevant, and the country is heading for decades of isolation as an international pariah, trusted by nobody. Good riddance.
