It's always interesting to see these old topics and the statements everyone including yourself made and how much of it was right and how much was wrong. Like the "Russian economy imploding" or the "F-16 being sent to Ukraine", neither of which happened to this day!
Two years after the discussions in the topic was made, Russia is still standing, probably it still has the resources to continue its war against Ukraine for longer, BUT what would be the cost after the war? Will it be the same as what the history books tell us with the Soviet Union? The United States probably has made a controlled move to keep sending resources to Ukraine and continue draining Russia slowly.
The difference between this war and the last one is that here US is also paying a dire price, and Europe (US main and soon only remaining ally) is paying an even heavier price. In other words prolonging the war would hurt them as well as Russia.
As for Russian economy, I have to say they've managed to control the situation and grow over the past 2 years very well. However there are serious issues that I see:
One of the reasons why Russian economy grew was because they expanded their military industries and are now producing much larger number of weapons. That means a lot of people went to these new jobs and that is good at first sight because that's increased employment and people are making money. However, this is still not jobs that would help the society and the country in the long run.
In other words that's not exactly a healthy economy even though there is a nice GDP growth.
I can say the same criticism about US economy as well. A lot of it is coming from "arms dealers" that are increasing their production similar to Russians to feed the wars US regime starts. That's an even bigger and more expensive industry compared to the Russian's and it's just as unhealthy.
