Russia economy on the brink as ‘nobody can afford to go on holiday or eat at a restaurant’

The speed of their resumed bromance has shocked and shaken and its allies.

But while will undoubtedly savour every moment of ’s nauseating courtship, the outlook for ’s downtrodden people is anything but rosy.

to decapitate , at least 850,000 of its troops have been killed or injured, according to Kyiv’s estimates.

The lives of tens of millions more civilians across the Russian Federation, meanwhile, have also changed for the worse, albeit without much sympathy from the rest of the world.

As they struggle to make ends meet in the face of an economy aimed almost solely at war and have no hope of having their voice heard in a political arena in which all of Putin’s opponents have been exiled or killed, the majority of Russians are living under a level of trepidation and pessimism almost unknown in the rest of world.

“The degree of anxiety for the present and the future has grown a lot. I don’t understand how to have and raise children under this regime,” says a woman living in the Moscow area, who bravely spoke to the Daily Express under condition of anonymity.

Her life, she admits, hasn’t been turned completely upside down by the conflict, but the changes that it prompted have nevertheless affected her greatly.

“First, there is a strong concern for male relatives and the need to constantly monitor how to protect them from conscription,” she says. “Secondly, the daily discomfort is the withdrawal of services and stores that I used to use regularly.”

Two family members of the woman, who describes her views on the war as “strictly negative”, have fought in , with one “severely wounded” on the frontline.

Another woman from Kemerovo, southern , knows five people who went to fight in – three of whom as volunteers. Among them, a 19-year-old mechanic was transferred to a combat zone after joining the Russian army, and once there “became a medic,” where he was expected to “stitch up wounded soldiers”.

She tells the Express: “When he was sent there, he had no idea he would have to perform actual surgical procedures.”

The woman insists she is against the war, and does not care whether wins or loses.

“Ordinary people like us just want all of this not to be happening,” she adds.

Over the course of the past three years, however, and in particular between late 2023 and late 2024, ordinary Russians began to notice the impact of a worsening economy on their lives.

George Barros, the Team & Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Team Lead at the Institute for Study of War in Washington, has no doubt is in an increasingly precarious financial situation.

“Fundamentally, did not prepare to wage and sustain a protracted war,” he says. “He thought this was going to be a war of six months maximum and what we’ve really seen is the absence of a long-term strategy. And because he didn’t plan to do this, he’s had to rob Peter to pay Paul in a variety of places.

“The bottom line is, has been cannibalising the national wealth that Putin built for , starting in around the 2000s with the high oil prices that Putin used to build the sovereign wealth fund.”

Among other indicators, inflation is running wildly out of control, making ordinary Russians more poor, cold and hungry.

“The central bank overnight lending rate is 21%, which is insane,” Barros adds. “The official inflation rate is between 8% and 9% – but those numbers are inaccurate.”

Another Russian, also speaking anonymously for safety, tells the Express: “In , from 2014 everybody got accustomed to living with high inflation.”

Suggesting older Russians were used to hardship, the man says his parents’ generation were “OK to live with high prices”. Yet, he adds, “even they were shocked by the last inflation figures, with grocery products rising nearly 28% in one year.”

Even relatively wealthy Russians for basic products like milk, butter and vegetables.

The prices of holidays both in and around the world as well as flights around the country have increased, while the prices of food and household goods have risen by 25%, the Express is told.

Our source added it was “impossible” to buy a car or an apartment, with convenient being provided only for people with young children.

She continues: “I won’t say that our life has somehow worsened but we feel that now we can’t save money for holidays or anything else to the extent that we could afford before, provided we have our own place, for which we don’t have to pay or rent, and we don’t eat in restaurants.”

Data from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) shows the price of butter jumped on average by 36.5% between November 2023 and 2024. The price of a pack of “Brest-Litovsk” high-grade butter in Moscow rose by 34% since the start of last year to 239.96 rubles (£1.96) – a significant sum when the average Russian earns less than £9,900 a year.

The price rise , which saw some supermarkets forced to secure butter in anti-theft cases.

While these prices made news around the world, the price of one staple good has risen even more dramatically. Potatoes now cost almost 100% more than they did a year ago, with prices reportedly going from 28 rubles to 54 (23p to 54p), a whopping 94.8% increase. Caviar rose by 49.76%, red onions by 45.82%, and cabbage by 37.6%.

Some products, Rosstat says, did become cheaper in 2024, with buckwheat prices dropping by 6.4% and eggs by 11.2%.

During his orchestrated end-of-year news conference in December, Putin said inflation was a “worrying” signal and that the rise in prices was “unpleasant and bad”.

Meanwhile, more than £240billion in Russian state assets have been frozen in G7 countries, including £16billion in the UK alone.

Today ahead of the third anniversary of the all-out invasion of , many Russians feel deeply pessimistic about their future.

Sanctions introduced at the beginning of the conflict by the US, EU and UK, continue to bite, with access to lucrative Western markets now all but cut off for ’s rich and poor.

Despite his ongoing bullishness, very few would argue the Russian leader was anticipating anything other than a quick victory when he ordered his full-scale attack.

The Kremlin continues to redirect the country’s resources into the conflict to a quite remarkable degree, with the latest Military Balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies saying ‘s war spending is outperforming all European countries combined.

Additionally, the human cost of a war in which, by most estimates, is losing as many as 45,000 people a month is also adding up financially.

expert George Barros says it is imperative the West continue to apply pressure on the Russian economy. “It took three years of the Russians being destroyed in with our support, it took three years of sanctions and all of everything that we’ve done to put the Russians into this precarious situation,” he says.

“And so it would be such a tremendous waste of leverage and waste of an opportunity to squander the pressure we’ve built up gradually over three years.”

Michael Clarke, a Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, says the Russian economy is “being bent out of shape by the war economy”. He adds: “And that war economy won’t change even with a peace deal in because there’s so much momentum behind it.

“So in another year or so, or at least by next year, that economy will be under severe strain, there will be an even bigger crisis for ordinary Russians and a lot of small businesses going bankrupt because they can’t get credit because all the credit that is available is now going into the arms industry and inflation will continue.”

All eyes are now on Mr Trump who may hold the key not just to peace but to what everyday life looks like for the average Russian.