Max, in addition to what I have cited below, the Russian economy is set for long term growth also thanks to BRICS and the various trade and economic relationships it is building there.

Russia has tremendous natural resources. China has tremendous technological and industrial capacity. The two of them will be unstoppable.

This is, of course, the one of the things that US foreign policy had always feared most of all - that Russia, with its vast resources and energy reserves, would find a partner with industrial capacity and capability to turn that amazing wealth into finished goods, dominating the entire global consumer market, and eclipsing the waning industrial ,might of the USA.

Until recently, it was US policy to do everything to keep Russia and China at odds with each other, and to prevent what should have always been a natural partnership. But then Russia and Germany started to get cozy, and that was proving to be a challenge to US hegemony.

The partnership between Russia, with its cheap abundant energy, and Germany, with its amazing industrial prowess, became a threat when EU GDP surpassed that of the US.

Something had to be done, and demonising Russia, imposing sanctions and blowing up Nord Stream was a good way to "keep the Germans down".

But Russia and China share a huge land border. Eurasia was not a place that the US could sabotage as easily as it could in the Baltic.

The US sanctions drove Russia into the arms of its Eurasian neighbours. They realised that they had so much in common. And so "Project Ukraine" ended up sounding the death knell for Western geostrategic and economic hegemony.