Caveat; the article actually mentioned Russia but everything it said appeared like it was referring to Nigeria. Nigeria is even a worst case scenario. Just replace Russia with Nigeria and get the picture.

So surreal...

Russia is dying.

And it’s not a catch phrase, but a fact.

States seem eternal, but they are not. Sure, the land on which they are located will still be there, but that’s all. The peoples inhabiting the land, the borders of the countries, and more importantly — the forms of government change.

Breakaway regions of Kievan Rus, vassal lands of the Golden Horde, the Muscovy principality, the Russian Tsardom, the Russian Empire, the Russian Republic, the USSR and the Russian Federation were all fundamentally different states.

A change in the government system almost always entails a change in elites, rights, laws, property distribution, image of the future, governance structures, political alliances — and at times, the physical destruction of the population, at least partially.

Now, we can take the date of adoption of the state’s constitution as a marker of “the birth of a state”: a state’s constitution is its genetic code, which (more or less) determines everything else.

The world’s oldest state (by the date it’s current Constitution was adopted) is the USA — its Declaration of Independence is 237 years old.

The United States Constitution was written in 1787 and became effective in 1789. It was based on 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, drafted by John Adams.

The Russian Empire existed for 196 years.
The USSR lasted 69 years.
The Russian Federation is only 32 years old (like the rest of the post-Soviet states — including Ukraine).
But the Russian Federation is already dying.

What is a state, really?

States are systems.

Any system has several key characteristics that show what stage of the life cycle the system is in.

The first characteristic is structural complexity, which is determined by the number of elements of the system and the connections between them.

The structural complexity of a state is determined by the size of the population and the development of subsystems — science, education, health care, industries, services, the finance sector, non-governmental organizations, political movements, law enforcement, and so on.

In a developing state, new structures are constantly emerging: they interact with each other, create new chains of internal and external connections — and this allows the state to implement a greater number of functions.

Primitive states had simple functions: protect their territory and collect taxes.

Modern states provide citizens’ security and well-being, protect their rights and freedoms, ensure compliance with laws, give citizens social security — and much more.

Degrading states as systems become smaller and simpler: existing substructures disappear, connections between the remaining elements are getting destroyed.

In Russia, both the size of the population and its quality are quickly declining: the gender and age structure are deteriorating; the most economically active part of the population is fleeing the country — and is being partially replaced by migrants from less developed countries.

Many substructures of the state (political parties and citizens’ movements, public associations, NGOs, the judicial system, etc.) in Russia are diminished and replaced by dummies that do not fulfill their functions.

Russia is dying??...
I've never seen such rubbish written in a long time...

Ask anybody verse in geopolitics, since the fall of Soviet Union Russia influence is at it highest now...

Russia is declining??.. Maybe declining has another meaning..