>Coal usage is leveling off and might even start going backwards over the next decade...

Coal is phased out as energy source, but it is used in steel production. There's some local demand for it, but nevermind, you are right, economically it may be already irrelevant. My point was, your mentioning of oil and gas was not based on the knowledge of economic geography of this region.

>Ukraine wasn't exactly a manufacturing powerhouse before the war, and Russia nearly levelled a big chunk of it, such as the Azovstal steel plant.

Speaking of which, you are certainly not aware that there's a property boom in Mariupol right now, thanks to 2% mortgages subsidized by government (that's basically free money). In peaceful times it will be incredibly attractive for investment for many reasons. Reconstruction jobs will last for a while and the example outcome of such spending you can see in the skyline of modern Grozny. It's more likely than in Chechnya that the economy of this region may actually produce some surplus within 10-15 years due to a different governance model. In Ukraine it would be an economic powerhouse too, but it is wrong to think that Russia has ruined it forever.

>Just ask how productive the fields of Verdun are.

There's nothing even remotely comparable to Verdun in Ukraine. The same region was a battlefield in WWII and civil war, it did not make it lifeless. Cleaning and reconstruction effort will take some time, but Russia does have resources for that.

>Have you not watched /r/combatfootage recently?

Of course not. I can work with native sources in Ukrainian and Russian on both sides of the conflict that give me a full picture, not just drone videos.

> but they're forced to buy shells from North Korea!

Taken out of context this means nothing. Russia is currently producing 3 times more shells than entire NATO combined. They were much more efficient in increasing production than supposedly economically superior Western countries. They buy extra from North Korea due to the intensity of the conflict. The same can be said about many other types of equipment (drone production increasing even ahead of schedule).

> The Ruble is going to lose a lot of its value when the Russian government can no longer afford to artificially prop it up. People don't like being paid in turnips and promises.

Wrong assumption. There exists scarcity of the workforce in Russia, so salaries in non-government sector are rising too. As a matter of fact, the war reduced inequality for the first time in many years, thanks to visibly higher incomes of working class. For migrants, who send the money abroad this only means that they should not save in rubles and use less volatile currency. Yuan is already popular in Russia.

> Sure, maybe, but would you rather work in an air-conditioned robotics factory that looks like a clean-room and getting paid in hard currency or cutting lumber in Siberia and getting paid in Rubles?

Reality is not how you imagine it. First of all, many Siberian and Arctic jobs are paid better and are often taken by Russians. Most Central Asian immigrants go to European part of Russia and a few big cities in Asian part. It's mostly a hard work, for sure, but assumption that they will get anything better in Korea or anywhere else in South Asia is surely wrong. Nobody is going to hire a guy from Tajikistan who does not speak Korean and has no idea what to do on an air-conditioned robotics factory. He will be doing the same type of the job as in Russia but with less social security, no support from diaspora, much harder visa process etc. It's basically an ignorant fantasy that they might have gone to Korea. It does not work that way.