The economy is growing because of massive government expenditures on defense. The same thing happened with Nazi Germany. It's not sustainable.
"Buoyant commodity prices" is also known as inflation. They have high inflation despite having a federal interest rate of 18%, which is sky high. Not great signs for their economy.
Not at the same scale. At the peak of the Vietnam War, the US spent less than 10% of GDP on the war. Most of the time it was only half of that (for comparison it’s less than 3% at the moment).
Russia currently spend about 40% of the GDP on Ukraine war ( coming off my memory, may not be 100% accurate). That can’t be sustainable and they will have long lasting impact.
Why would they need to borrow when they can continue to sell commodities (which the EU and US continue to buy, btw)? Besides, there's no indication that they are running out of reserves. Wasn't one of Putins first moves to get off of foreign debt?
They’re going to have a hard time exporting oil and gas if Ukraine keeps attacking their refineries. Repairing those refineries requires equipment that Russia has a hard time getting thanks to sanctions.
Those commodities won't even come close to covering their spending spree. And their reserves are running dry very quickly. Likely by the end of this year.
"Buoyant commodity prices" is also known as inflation. They have high inflation despite having a federal interest rate of 18%, which is sky high. Not great signs for their economy.