What Putin was referring to was obviously the loss of Russia's superpower status. That's what he means by "geopolitical catastrophe".

As for the standard of living, the subsequent 1990s were pretty horrible in many ways, but in the last 20 years or so, most people in Russia have enjoyed a higher standard of living than in the Soviet Union thanks to the oil and gas bonanza and market economy. Before the sanctions hit, you could buy anything in Russia and the country was solidly upper middle-income by world standards.

The Baltics have been vastly better off. Their national existence was slowly fading away during the Soviet period thanks to mass immigration of Russians and other non-nationals from the rest of the USSR they had no control over. Their men had to serve years in the awful Soviet military as conscripts suffering from hazing and atrocious living conditions. Some were used as cannon fodder in Afghanistan. Ditto for Ukraine and Belarus and the Central Asian republics. Eastern Central European countries were also liberated from totalitarian communism. Countries like Poland, Czechia and Slovakia are now in very good shape. East Germany was abolished and the territories were able to join West Germany. Massive influx of money from West Germany followed.

Before February 24, the status quo favored Russia. Ukraine had already left Russia's orbit politically but wasn't going to integrate with the west. The attack exposed Russia's military weakness, destroyed Russia's arms export markets, brought massive sanctions on Russia and made it a pariah state. Any hope of reconciliation between Russians and Ukrainians and any sympathies felt by Ukrainians toward Russia are completely lost for many generations. Expanding the war was a serious mistake on part of Putin that may jeopardize his presidency depending how serious the fallout ends up being.