Guriev sees a dead end

[timelets]

“They have no way out,” said Sergei Guriev, a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris. “Unless oil prices go up, they are really looking at a dead end.” Without further spending cuts and if oil prices remain around current levels, the government will use up its reserve fund, created when the price of oil was high, in about a year, he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/world/europe/russians-feel-rubles-fall-but-putin-remains-mostly-unscathed.html

Russia has no borrowing power (Крымнаш!) and an extremely low foreign investment appeal (Крымнаш!). Unless oil prices recover early next year, the government will be broke by the end of 2016. They'd have to cut expenses and/or print money. The good news is that Russian working population is shrinking; therefore, unemployment will stay low.