What is happening in Russia is what happened in Germany between WWI and WWII. Loose monetary policy, which devalued the ruble.
WWIII, anybody?
Actually, the opposite is happening. The Russian central bank is not flooding the market with fiat Rubles to shore it up, they are allowing it to fall in value and pumping up interest rates.
I doubt it will work well, but its much closer to the US Fed in the early 80s tight money policy that caused skyrocketing interest rates.
We are doing the opposite with tidal waves of quantitative easing.
One of us will prove wrong.
The Russians only real move is to price their gas in a gold based trade currency, and become the main oil supplier to China. But this is all a very bad game and a lot of people will suffer over this. People in many places.
We are already in the next world war. So far, it has been mainly economic.
The fools think that they can keep it that way, without remember the last go round. See, we tried it, and Japan decided to go for broke.