HOW MUCH LONGER CAN THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY SURVIVE?

THE SPEED of their resumed bromance has shocked and shaken Ukraine and its allies.

- By Ciaran McGrath and Alice Scarsi

But while Vladimir Putin will undoubtedly savour every moment of President Trump's nauseating courtship, the outlook for Russia's downtrodden people is anything but rosy.

Three years on from the Kremlin's illfated attempt to decapitate Ukraine, at least 850,000 of its troops have been killed or injured, according to Kyiv's estimates.

But the lives of tens of millions more civilians across the Russian Federation have also changed for the worse, albeit without much sympathy from the rest of the world.

They are struggling to make ends meet in an economy aimed almost solely at war and have no hope of having their voice heard in a political arena in which all of Putin's opponents have been exiled or killed.

It means the majority of Russians are living under a level of trepidation and pessimism almost unknown in the rest of world.

"The degree of anxiety for the present and the future has grown a lot. I don't understand how to have and raise children under this regime," said a woman living in the Moscow area, who bravely spoke to the Sunday Express under condition of anonymity.

Her life, she admitted, hadn't been turned completely upside down by the conflict but the changes that it prompted had still affected her greatly.

"Firstly, there is a strong concern for male relatives and the need to constantly monitor how to protect them from conscription," she said. "Secondly, the daily discomfort is the withdrawal of services and stores that I used to use regularly." Two family members of the woman, who described her views on the war as "strictly negative", have fought in Ukraine, with one "severely wounded" on the front line.