Russia will emerge from its war with Ukraine "weakened, with an exhausted general population, badly depleted conventional forces, and a stagnant economy" - conditions that closely mirror the Soviet Union in its final decade, according to a new Carnegie Endowment assessment by Eugene Rumer. The parallel carries both a promise and a warning for the West, "Hvylya" reports, citing the Carnegie analysis.

In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union was locked in a tense standoff with NATO while its economy stagnated, its defense industries struggled to compete with the United States, and its army bled in Afghanistan. Moscow was "desperately in need of peredyshka - a breather," Rumer writes, and that breather came with Gorbachev's perestroika. Post-war Russia will face the same need - but under even worse conditions.

The critical difference, Rumer argues, is that today's environment is far more hostile than the one Russia faced in the 1990s. After the Cold War, Western Europe was disarming and trying to engage Russia as a partner. Eastern Europe posed no military threat. Finland and Sweden maintained neutrality. That is "diametrically opposed to the situation that Russia will confront in the years to come," with rearming neighbors, a hostile Ukraine, and NATO on an expanded border.

The 1990s offer a troubling precedent for what happens when Russian conventional power collapses. Following the implosion of its military capabilities - which Putin himself later described as having "practically collapsed" - Moscow abandoned its Soviet-era no-first-use nuclear pledge in 1993 and embraced nuclear weapons as both a deterrent and a warfighting tool. The latest Russian nuclear doctrine, published in 2024, suggests nuclear weapons are again poised to assume a greater role in military planning.

While it is "possible, even likely" that a Putin successor will seek an opening to the West, Rumer cautions that Russia's hostility toward Europe is rooted in structural factors - geography, history, and political culture - that "may be moderated due to temporary circumstances but will not disappear." Russia is "woefully ill prepared" to deal with a long-term standoff amid a new technological revolution and its loss of access to the Western-led global economy.

Also read: Built by Andropov: The Secret Cold War Compound That Russia Never Abandoned.