The most terrible thing is to see clear logic in all this

In the early days, it seemed that the whole situation was pure madness, from which everyone would lose: the oligarchs and top officials in both countries of the conflict would be deprived of a luxurious life; the population will once again become poorer; politicians will receive reputational damage - some allowed the war, others unleashed it; EU countries will fall into a crisis due to energy prices, and will lose a large sales market; etc... And, it would seem, what is all this for? For the sake of restoring historical borders or salvation from the Nazis? Not! There is a completely banal reason, which they are trying to hide behind pathos speeches. This is money.

But everyone lost... In fact, not all! A week after the start of hostilities in Ukraine, the beneficiaries became obvious to me.

USA.
For an empire to thrive, it must siphon resources from the colonies. If the empire instead sends resources to the periphery, then it ends up as the USSR. Someone has to pay for a banquet with inflating bubbles in the financial markets during the period of financialization, in the terminal stage of the existence of the current world-system. The US has huge problems with inflation and debt. And rates cannot be raised so as not to bring down the stock market and not to disperse unemployment. Any tightening of monetary policy will lead to the loss towards China in the race for leadership. And there is only one way to solve this problem - you need to ensure a rapid outflow of capital from the periphery to yourself. And capital does not run away from anything so quickly as from war. So the States will put the wave "3" in the S&P index.

EU.
The next victim of the hegemon will be the European Union. Prices for energy resources are not only a very high communal apartment, which will inevitably lead to protests of the population; but also, more importantly, the cost of production. Cars, trains and planes will rise in price, so they will begin to lose in the competition to "partners" from the United States. The accumulated contradictions will lead to a series of crises in the EU and the bankruptcy of the peripheral members of the union - Greece, Portugal, the Baltic states and others. The semi-peripheries of Britain, Germany and France will shift their costs to the satellites. This is the wave "5" in the S&P index, the end of the hegemon's dominance.

China.
When capital is exhausted in all colonies, peripheries and semi-peripheries, then the decline of the empire will happen. But the end of the US dominance cycle will not be herbivorous at all, as we are now seeing. The same was observed by our ancestors at the beginning of the last century, when Britain was replaced by America. And their ancestors saw the same at the time of the change of leader from Holland to Britain. And before that, in capitalism there was also the Genoa cycle. Pablo Escobar once said that there can only be one king. And he was deadly right.
But why China? Due to the fact that the leadership in the brave new world is provided by the industrial revolution, to which the PRC is now closest.

Russia.
The "progressive elite" has an opinion that "everything is bad in Russia, and it will get even worse." But did you know that Russia is the only country in the world, apart from the USA, that has its own processor architecture? There is also the British ARM, but it is only nominally British. This is important in the sense that without access to microelectronics, which are the brains of everything from phones and cars to machine tools and servers, China will not be able to overtake the US. In many ways, this is why China is supporting Russia in this mess. Well, wood, wheat, military technology, oil and gas at reasonable prices in the appendage.

And what about Russia itself? In the flow of news about the bombing of peaceful Ukrainian cities and the flight of capital from the Russian Federation and Ukraine, the news about the nationalization of companies in Russia passed by many.

In simple terms, $10 billion was allocated to buy up depreciated securities, primarily export and technology companies. These companies in dollars fell at the time of the suspension of trading by 3-5 times. This means that the state will receive 5 or more stocks at the price of one outside the exchange, gold reserves are not stored in rubles. By the way, the gold reserves themselves in the NATO countries are approximately equivalent to the amount of corporate debt of depreciated companies, which means that debts can be mutually nullified. The stocks were bought at an unprecedented low cost, and dividends on foreign exchange earnings will now remain in the country. There is no point in taking them abroad - the yacht will not be sold and arrested. This means that they will have to be spent in Russia, which will serve as a multiplier growth of the economy in 5-10 years, when economic agents recover from the shock. Yes, when it seems that everything is lost, the Russian Federation will begin decades of economic growth. Buy when there's blood on the streets, even if it's yours! :o)

Those who play in long will get more in the end than they have now lost. But you can't bring back the dead...