Russia's economy in 'inescapable hole' without foreign aid — analyst

Piotr Kulpa, political expert, former secretary of the Polish delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and former member of the Polish government, expressed this opinion on Espreso TV.

"Russia has climbed into a hole from which it cannot escape without external help. Look, if you examine the economy, there's a deep economic decline underway. Everything appears to be holding at a minimal decline level—around 3-4%, which isn't much—but this is only sustained by the military-industrial complex. This is happening at the expense of plundering all other sectors, which are experiencing declines of 20, 30, even 40 percent," Kulpa explained.

The analyst is convinced that the United States is more interested in preventing Russia's collapse than China is. However, according to him, the U.S. will not succeed in saving the Russian Federation from disintegration.

"This is a collapse, and today, without external support, Russia is falling apart. There's an ongoing negotiation issue between China and the U.S.: Who has a greater interest in preventing Russia's collapse? And here comes the response from China, which believes that the U.S. is more interested in preventing Russia from falling apart. The question is, where will Trump get the money to prevent Russia's collapse? Russia's collapse is simply not beneficial to the U.S., because the U.S. views Russia as its pocket empire—the tool through which the Anglo-Saxons defeated Napoleon, Wilhelm II, and Hitler. The U.S. has been involved with Russia's disintegration throughout history. Remember Bush, who came to Kyiv and argued that the collapse of the USSR was unnecessary, and so on. Now, just as the U.S. was unable to save the USSR from collapse, it will also be unable to save Russia from disintegration," he added.

• On January 22, Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service reported that the Russian economy began 2026 with a noticeable acceleration of inflation. During the first 12 days of January, the average daily rate of price growth sharply rose to 0.104% compared to 0.014% at the end of 2025.