people can almost start starving or freezing due to lack of money.
If you are able to work and are not lazy you will not starve here.
If you are disabled or old you can apply for state pension - they are not large, but that's because people could not save anything during soviet times - SU left us with no money.
In normal countries you could save for your pension in some pension fund, or do business, and save the spare cash. But SU was not a normal country, so you could not do any of that - you had to watch your money wasted on bullshit like soviet military, and good life for communist elite.

And lots of people are forced to simply leave the country.
No one is forcing them - borders are open - everyone are free to go wherever they want.
And in the meantime old people don't get the care they deserve, and the schools and railways are suffering from neglect
In Sweden ?
but also those from other countries who turn up and tell some story about being persecuted
Like Latvian Legionnaires who were extradited back to USSR and died in GULAG?
And only after more than 50 years Sweden apologized for that.
Practically all violent crime in Sweden involves somebody with a foreign background.
Russian is "official" language in prisons here