No, it's not at all clear to me. It's an expensive and risky investment, but a long-term one. After a failed 20C, Russia is seizing it's last good chance to become a fully sovereign, self-contained modern technological civilization, i.e. not an appendage of an appendage (the EU).
nitter.1d4.us
lol at Anatoly Karlin for thinking that a 5-10% population difference makes all of the difference in the world in regards to this. Even in the very best case scenario, Russia's Ukraine invasion won't boost its population by more than 10% since Ukrainians now hate Russia's guts and thus most of them would very likely move to either what remains of Free Ukraine or to the West rather than to live under Russian rule. Russia would get 15 million Ukrainians at the very most (excluding the Donbass, which Russia could have annexed without war), and possibly even considerably less than that. 15 million Ukrainians is 10% of Russia's total population.
With or without a depopulated Ukraine, Russia simply doesn't have the demographic base necessary to be a peer competitor to either the EU, the Anglosphere, or China. So, it's either Russia becoming a European/Western appendage or Russia becoming a Chinese appendage. Choose one.
And being a self-sustained technological civilization is overrated anyway when you don't produce very much elite science. Germany, Italy, and Japan all previously tried to become self-sustained technological civilizations, or at least their unique own civilizational spaces, in World War II and failed, and yet they are all relatively happy right now. Both Italy and Japan have even managed to remain pretty Based, and Germany, Italy, and Japan all each produce much more elite science than Russia does in spite of each of them having less (sometimes much less) people than Russia has.
And Russia's miserable 20th century was in part self-inflicted since no one forced Russia to fight for Serbia back in 1914.