They spent a long time building relationships across Europe, growing ties with the west. From sports sponsorships, to infrastructure partnerships to joint ventures like the ISS. They threw all of it away.

They also made a balls of the invasion, embarrassing themselves, losing a huge amount of high ranking officials and pissed off China in doing so.

They have tacit support from India because India is getting flooded with cheap oil but that won’t last forever as the Saudis get more and more annoyed and the US continues to ramp up production.

And their operations in Africa are hampered by an international warrant meaning Putin can’t attend meetings of their new “bloc”.

They are on a war footing, war booms the economy but their currency is artificially inflated and they have hemorrhaged young graduates and skilled professionals.so manufacturing might be up because every available man is getting paid a pittance to shove artillery together but the workers left in country fear conscription and can’t afford eggs.