Of course the economy is beginning to recover from the sanctions. Putin has been preparing for his "reconquest" of Eastern Europe and the Stans since he assumed office. He took on an openly anti-western course since his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference (when I was only one month old, fun fact). He probably saw our global economic and military supremacy weakening following Afghanistan and Iraq and because Russia had stabilized (or at least stopped being the complete sh**thole it was under Yeltsin) after the 1990s, he decided it was time to act.
This entire war was proceeded by the clownshow that was him testing us.
First he launched the Chechen war which he """won""" and as an added benefit got to jump on the radical Islamic terrorism bandwagon (remember this, the Russians change their tune on Islam at least three more times in this story), which he used to consolidate his power- in addition to getting around term restrictions by appointing the drunk Medvedev as a placeholder.
Then he decided to invade Georgia to probe the soil and see how the US/NATO would react. We were in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since 1929, so we mostly ignored him. He interpreted this as a
carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. So, he went on to meddle in Eastern European politics, including but not limited to shaking down Ukraine for natural resources, funding right-wing parties all across Europe (with the added benefit of giving him ammunition for the "west is nazi" argument) while saturating the Russian people with anti-western sentiment and Soviet nostalgia at home (including the rehabilitation of Stalin).
He saw that the west was disunited because of the US/Europoor split following the Halliburton's war in Iraq. He capitalized on that in several ways using both the wars and the resulting refugee crisis. One, to increase/take advantage of existing racist sentiment and propaganda to stir up hatred against "the liberal gay western (((cabal))) " and the resulting Euroscepticism (AfD, FPO, etc)
Second, and just as importantly, he used this to prop up the traditionalist Russia as an alternative. Never mind that Russia has the highest rate of abortion, single mothers, and only 12% of the population actually go to church regularly, in news that I'm sure would be devastating to Jackson Hinkle if he was capable of reading.
Anyway, and three, to paint Eastern European governments that hate Russia for totally, 1989% unjustified reasons as a puppet of the US (((liberals))) who were totally Nazis in disguise, which was easy when the Euroids were divided between trying to coax them into joining the EU and Eurozone and keeping them as a buffer-zone backwater.
The best (and most recent) example of the latter was in late 2021 when Belarus' Potato Cockroach started dumping Middle Eastern migrants on the Polish border so the Poles could be painted as a racist, white supremacist state (I mean they (PiS) kinda are, objectively). Unlike, you know, the hyper-racist, militant failed state known as Russia.
Still, propaganda from this was effectively used (at least at the government level, polling still shows that Red Velvet's GLOBAL SOUTH doesn't really like Russia all that much) to convince backwaters in Africa and Asia that Russia was a better bet than Europe.
The Euroids- per usual- didn't do themselves any favors, to be fair. France intervened constantly in North West Africa, for instance. So a large, proud, middling power seemed like an intriguing idea.
Anyway, Putin first failed in Ukraine when his puppet (Yanukovbitch) 's sharp turn away from a planned EU accession path caused the Euromaidan protests. The jury is still out on why the Ukrainian people wanted to be more like the developed, relatively free EU than the failed backwater sh**thole country of Russia. But (totally unpaid) Pro-Russian protesters soon spawned, staging provocations in an attempt to make the protesters look like a CIA psyop or something. Russian media- in between calling for the genocide of ethnic minorities- started hurling accusations of Nazism against pro-freedom protesters.
But Euromaidan was like a switch flipped in Russian society. Putin through de-communization out the 13th floor window. For instance, just months after the Crimea debacle, Stalin was chosen as the most influential figure in world history by Russians. All the anti-Western, Russian nationalist, traditionalist, anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic sentiments (which was quite strong) was effectively directed in one direction.
Specifically, it was angled at the "Evil Nazi Jewish Gay West". Putin started openly provoking the Europoors and NATO writ large with displays of (not functional, as we now know) military force, China-style flybys in other countries' EEZ waters, and playing Khrushchev with missiles and other military assets in Kalingrad.
All to rack up the atmosphere of an imminent Cold War 2.0 and maybe even WWIII where a Russia that was humiliated by the Gay Western (((Cabal))) - totally not because it was an authoritarian sh**thole- would finally make (((them))) pay for the sh**tty decisions they forced Russian leaders to make. The annual Victory Day junkets also took on the appearance of a war cult, with cool-and-totally-normal jingoistic nonsense like "we can do it again" and "to Berlin" featuring heavily at every May 9th Dictator Ego Trip- sorry, Victory Day parade.
Having had this experience somewhere between 1945 and 1991 times before, Eastern Europe, particularly the Baltics and Poland, took notice and tried to raise alarm, but were mostly told to shut the f@ck up by the naive russophiles in charge in various Western European countries (*cough* Germany and the Christian Dumbf@ck Union *cough*)
In the last few years, he has used his military and propaganda machine (sometimes referred to by the letters "R" and "T") to create the impression that the following are true:
1. The West is imperialist (and is being hypocritical about it), waging pointless bloody wars in the Middle East and innocent Muslims (Read about the Chechnyan War for more!)
2. The West was weak or at least performed poorly those wars, requiring Russia to step in like in Syria and murder civilians, sorry, deal with the issue "properly"
3. Western democracies are weak in dealing with the 2014-2015 refugee wave because the government (((elite))) is too concerned with making money (as opposed to the totally-non-oligarchical Russia) to stop them.
Using these methods, Russian propaganda managed to manipulate both "anti-imperialist" and NSDAP, sorry, nationalist groups within Western Europe as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe and pave the way for its "just war" of "reconquering" what belonged to them (Eastern Europe). This propaganda was different for different types of people.
In Western Europe- the main target of this offensive- the image of Eastern Europe was molded as either "poor moochers we're better off without" for the Nazi crowd, and the classic "we need to help our own people first" for the more moderate anti-American.
In the most russophallic country (*cough* Germany) this was usually something like "Eastern Europeans are silly poors crying wolf about Russia who is totally nice, #WhatAboutIraq" or "subliterate ingrates not worth defending so we'll pull out" (for the real national conservative) or even "backwards homophobic barbarians we don't want here because they'll ruin our utopia" (and no, Euroids- blinded by anti-American hatred and western self-loathing, didn't see the contradiction of Russia saying this).
In Russia, they were portrayed as "lost property" from the "golden years", accused of being "run by Nazis" anytime they tried to acknowledge any of the real repressions suffered from USSR, and "puppets of the West" in addition to the usual routine of constantly being threatened with "annexation in 3 days" whenever they "misbehaved" by taking a stance against Russia's (and the USSR's) politics.
Last but not least, in Eastern Europe itself, the Russians tried to portray themselves as "saviors of traditional values" as opposed to the gay west. And, subsequently, that joining organizations that would strengthen these nations (therefore making it harder for Russian imperialism) like NATO and the EU would cause these values to infiltrate their country.
