The policy that President Vladimir Putin has been pursuing for a quarter of a century has always been dominated by short-term interests and emotions, based on a completely arbitrary interpretation of legal norms. Achieving the goals chosen by the Kremlin master remained a priority and had to be ensured by all possible means—even though many of his actions proved poorly calculated. Taking this into account, deathonomics, which became the means to save the “special military operation” from the challenges it faced in the fall of 2022, appears a timely invention that fits perfectly into Putin’s logic. Based on “manual control”, with all fundamental decisions made by the president personally, it flouts all Russian laws and regulations, “plowing” the legal field as the authorities deem necessary at any moment. And it appeals to something that, in Putin’s view, wields the greatest power over people—money, which can buy almost everything, even lives. The past few years have demonstrated the validity of this primitive and cynical calculation. In Russia, there has been no shortage of people willing to sell their lives and their consciences for freshly printed rubles. This hastily engineered political and economic scheme has proved highly efficient during the war, as the tasks it addressed were urgent and critical. However, there are many reasons to assume that the consequences of its future application will cause serious damage to both Russia’s society and its economy.