What's fascinating to me is how Russia has burned, and then pissed on the ashes, of any and all "goodwill" it had built up since the end of the Cold War.
Sure, Russia was ALWAYS a crooked-ass corrupt oligarchy, but other such states have managed to be workable members of "the community of nations," with real international relationships, trade, etc. As evidenced by the STACK of western companies that operated in Russia (and profitably so), Russia was no different. It was a player, a member of the G-20 (albeit almost entirely a function of its size, agriculture, and petroleum resources). You could buy a McDonald's burger, a VW, and a nice purse, and live what most westerners would recognize as a relatively normal life, at least in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where most of the people live.
And in a matter of months -- shit, truly, DAYS -- all of that, poof, gone. Russia demonstrated itself to be a pariah state, and its people/culture to be so fucking retrograde as to be incompatible with western life and practices. And for fucking WHAT?