https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/188249/russia-economy-meltdown-small-businesses-face-shock-tax-raid-we-might-survive/amp

"We keep waiting that a political collapse of Russia will happen, just as it happened with Germany in 1918, when it lost the war despite the fact that not a single enemy soldier was present on German soil at the time,” said Russian economist Konstantin Sonin, now a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “This collapse isn’t happening now. But sooner or later those things always happen.” Despite earlier predictions of a meltdown caused by sanctions and war spending, the Russian economy has remained relatively resilient—but that can’t last forever, added Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin who served as an adviser to the Russian Central Bank until 2022. “It’s not that they will run out of money. But they will no longer be able to finance the situation using traditional ways, through taxes, through surgical spending cuts. They will no longer be able to maintain the illusion that nothing significant is going on.” The possible pathways will be to ramp up printing money, spurring inflation, to implement drastic welfare cuts, and to replace the current system of recruiting volunteer soldiers to fight in Ukraine with forcible mobilization, Prokopenko said. All of these steps could become triggers for unrest."