Working off a dead horse is an expression from a few hundred years ago. When individuals joined the military to pay off debts as a form of bankruptcy, they were fed hard tack by the military as a cheap means to keep them fed while their pay went to their debts.
The expression is double entendre. It both means they are working to pay off the debts and it means they are eating hard tack as their primary or sole food for long periods. The "dead horse" refers to both the debts and the unappealing meat they are eating.
Russia most likely invaded Ukraine because Ukraine is the bread basket of the region and Russia is a large country in the far north and has trouble raising enough food.
My sons are part Viking on their father's side and have read up on the history and culture of the Vikings to understand their heritage. They have told me things about it that I cannot find a nice, neat source to cite with a blurb supporting their assertions but I think what they have told me makes sense and is likely correct.
According to them, the practice of going a viking -- raiding other cultures nearby -- is rooted in the fact that they were in the far north where conditions were harsh and unforgivable and it made farming extremely hard to learn plus they didn't eat much seafood due to some sea animals in that area being poisonous.
The history of a Viking settlement implicitly supports this claim. They died out when fishing could have saved them because they stuck stubbornly with meat from farm animals and farming in a setting where that failed them.
According to my sons, the practice of going a viking ended because they were unusually good to their women who had reign over the household and this meant stolen brides were often happy to stay and they imported bits and pieces of culture from elsewhere and this eventually injected enough agricultural knowledge to successfully farm in the harsh, unforgiving northern climate.
If Russia went to war to capture food resources for their people like I think they did, you can't steal a steady food supply. Soldiering doesn't teach you to successfully work the land and rich farmland is not simply a feature of the landscape like a mountain is.
Sometimes you get lucky and happen upon rich farmland. There is a crescent of rich people in Alabama whose ancestors happened to settle especially rich lands and became wealthy because of it but I don't know what preceded that. I don't know if Natives MADE that soil especially nutrient rich or just what.
Farmland only remains rich and productive if farmers know how to keep the soil rich and productive. Modern farming practices are often extractive and this has led to nutritional value of produce steadily declining in recent decades and this likely is a factor in the obesity epidemic.
Most likely, Ukraine is the bread basket of the region in large part because the PEOPLE are good farmers and their CULTURE is imbued with a lot of best practices.
The war has caused food shortages and inflation and harmed the Ukrainian soil. Even if Ukraine walked away and said "Here. Have it. The land is yours." the Russian people would likely be less productive farmers than the Ukrainians and that's BEFORE you account for the damage the war has done to the productivity of the land.
Russia needs to end the war and let Ukraine recover and become more productive again.
Monetary policy is fundamentally manipulative and there are substantial limits to how much it can mitigate problems rooted in underlying fundamentals.
Merely injecting money tends to promote inflation. When the Spanish conquistadors brought back huge amounts of silver from the Americas, an injection of hard currency into an economy with the same amount of goods and services merely led to significant inflation.
The book The Wealth of Nations essentially introduced the concept of GDP -- Gross Domestic Product -- to the world. It introduced the concept that the goods and services available to the people was the wealth of a nation. Before that, wealth was measured in terms of gold in the king's coffers.
It is a major work in financial history and that's why it's a famous title.
Other than "The war in Ukraine MUST end," I don't know what Russia needs to do to work off its dead horse. But you can't really steal food security. That doesn't work.
Footnote
This piece is a reaction to this article: Russian Economy Facing a Tidal Wave of Bankruptcies