>>14What's going on in Russia is that the fat lazy bear who used to thrive on the endless shower of oil money suddenly found that the shower is over and it has no real options left. The state corporations who make up the majority of economy turned out to be extremely inefficient (just look at Gazprom: a giant massive bowl of fail), the oversized bureaucratic class is useless and has turned to quarreling over the dwindling money sources, and the general populace, complacent and apathic as it is, is starting to stand up for its rights. We've already had truckers protesting against new taxes, farmers protest against raiders overtaking their lands, pensioners protest over small pensions etc. Against the backdrop of growing poverty, the depth and pervasiveness of bureaucracy's corruption is becoming more vivid than ever. And the only thing those in power can do is flex the military muscles and increase patriotic bullshit rhetoric on the TV.
This isn't like the 1991 because back then the country had substantial industrial assets. They were Soviet and crappy, but they could in principle be converted to do something useful. This helped when the rouble crashed in 1998. At the beginning of 00s, oil was 25$ and Russian economy was growing. Right now, oil is 40-50$ and the economy is shrivelling. The inefficient, industrially-castrated (who do you need factories when you can just sell oil and gas for 125$?) behemoth that is the Russian economy has no resources for growth and the only options Kremlin have are World War III or slow descent into dusty hopeless medieval antiquity. All of that in the largest and most resourceful country in the world...