What happened?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The kleptocrats cleaned out Russia. Good luck with future development. I think, culturally, Russia has lived in a Fox News type reality for 80 years.

All of Putin's likely successors are hand picked by him and are just as bad, if not worse. They'll be some realignment in the government ranks, but that's about it. This idea that its all going to be roses and rainbows after Putin is gone is quite naive. The most popular political party is United Russia, which is where Putin belongs, the next is the remnant of the Communist Party and they are even more hawkish.

Just a bankrupt collection of isolated areas that will be paying for Putin's megalomania for decades to come.

But not much anywhere else. Read an article today that said the opposite.

Russia is bankrupt sounds nice, but doesn't mean it is. Their sales of arms, oil, minerals, industry, crops, etc. is still going on strong to non-aligned western nations. They may actually be enjoying the cheaper prices.

Of course, Russia going bankrupt any day now has been stated by a few western media sites for a few years now, at some point they might be right?

And Eastern Russia is paying the price. No money from taxes are finding their way back to these population centers.