Not yet "on the brink" but moving closer to the brink with each passing day.
From 19FortyFive, April 27:
Putin is the Head of a Russian State on the Brink of Economic Collapse: Leonid Putin, meet Vladimir Brezhnev. Serious Russian economists are increasingly of the opinion that Russia is in deep trouble and that Putin’s policies are bringing it to the point of collapse.
In that sense, Putin’s Russia is following in the footsteps of Brezhnev’s USSR.
The Russian Economy Is in Trouble
A case in point is the view of one of Russia’s leading mathematicians, Academician Robert Nigmatulin, who told the Moscow Economic Forum in April 2026 that Russia’s economy is experiencing an existential crisis.
Reform won’t do the trick anymore. Restructuring—shades of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika!—is imperative. But economic restructuring presupposes political restructuring, which is impossible as long as Putin remains in power and believes, correctly, that his survival hinges on continuing the war against Ukraine.
An ethnic Bashkir, the 85-year-old Nigmatulin is a distinguished member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He served as the president of Bashkortostan’s Academy of Sciences and is a laureate of the USSR State Prize. In a word, he’s an authority, a full-fledged member of the Russian establishment, and no rabble-rouser.
His views must be taken seriously.
The Challenges Are Big for Moscow
Nigmatulin identified the following critical problems:
-Russians have the lowest disposable income in all of Europe, and China’s poorest regions are better off than Russia’s.
-Russia suffers from Europe’s highest mortality rate.
-In 2015-2025, GDP grew 1.5 percent per annum, while consumer prices rose 77 percent, and yearly inflation stood at 7 percent.
-Since 2012, none of Vladimir Putin’s economic decrees has been implemented.
-Investments are low and inefficient.
This is “no way to run the economy,” thundered Nigmatulin. Indeed, “the existing situation is a threat to the stability of the President’s rule under conditions of war ‘fatigue’ and horrific corruption…. The crisis will last long, and we are obligated to warn the President and society.”....
....MUCH MORE
Similar sentiments from Madame Nabiullina:
Russian central bank chief calls for honesty in economic data after Western allegations
And Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on what this means for her, personally:
Entangled In Russia's Faltering Economy: The Fate Of Its Respected Central Banker
