It deals with the contraction of the economy and the high inflation since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Economists now expect the economy to shrink to double digits and inflation to rise between 18 and 23 percent later this year. Speaking to Express.co.uk earlier this month through an interpreter, a Russian journalist, who did not want to be named, predicted a huge collapse for his country’s economy. He claimed that in six months, Russia would be in a “standstill” with terrible consequences for the people of the country. Read more: Huge fire in Moscow after car bombings Speaking to Express.co.uk, the journalist said: “Right now, what is happening is that the whole economy is at a dead end. “In about half a year, things will collapse. “It does not happen now, but in the next six months, if things continue as they are, things will become very, very bad, very, very fast. “As a journalist, I’m interested in how people will react to this and what their reaction will be. In the wake of Putin’s invasion, the Kremlin criminalized independent war reporting and also outlawed protests against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Civilians could face up to 15 years in prison for spreading “false news” about Russia’s armed forces and their development in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Western sanctions have cut Russia off from the West, an isolation that echoes the Soviet Union. However, according to the journalist and photographer, a large part of the Russian population will not worry about the country going backwards to a Soviet-like past. He said: “There is a nostalgia in Russian society, especially among the older generation, that times in the Soviet Union were much better. “I think that’s because they are a little misled. “They were young, they were in shape, they were healthy and they forgot about it. Your memory romanticizes the past to some extent. “Many of them live in this nostalgia, but it is false that they have invented in their head. It is not the reality. “They were young men capable of taking care of themselves, so these difficulties could be left in their minds. “If Russia is currently retreating into a Soviet Union, then it is a very bad copy, because at least in the Soviet Union there was a sense of stability, there was progress, there was a mission, there was a plan and there was a structure in place.”
