It's interesting to watch the Putin apologists zig zag about NATO. They seem to think that NATO is a plot to invade Russia and nothing else. They think that the war in Ukraine was a NATO plot against Russia. Russia claims this, of course, because part of the "rebuild the Soviet Union" thing is the reestablishment of the Cold War and the creation of an enemy.
This is coupled with the claim that NATO is weak (shades of Trump!), that the West is unwarlike and unprepared (except when operating in Third World countries), that the US is "deindustrialized" (which makes on wonder what it is spending its massive military budget on). It's also coupled with the strange claim that Russia is peace like and that there is no need for a NATO defense pact (which Putin and his Right wing pals talk about the countries they need to take back next should they win in Ukraine).
Most interesting is their projection that Ukraine is not really independent because it is "in NATO's pocket" and that therefore it needs to be in Russia's pocket instead. This tells us that Russia still believes in the old Soviet idea that other countries are either vassals or enemies.
As I have pointed out before, the Russian economy is about the size of Italy's, spread out over a much larger population. It's standard of living is a bit below Kazakhstan. It's main economy is based on gas and oil reserves, whose prices fluctuate in the world market. Unlike other oil economies (like even Saudi Arabia!), they are not really investing their oil profits to develop a non oil based industrial economy. Instead they flush billions down the toilet of trying to maintain a massive army that they don't need. In the 1990's, they talked about joining NATO themselves and even showed interest in joining the EU. Unfortunately they didn't. Now, money cascades out of the country into foreign banks and the interior of the country is dominated by non-elected strong men. Putin is (currently) the strongest, but since Russia is not an effective democracy, there is no telling who might replace him should he, say, fall out of a window by accident. One could argue that when the Soviet Union was defending "socialism" as a system against capitalism, they had a reason to be a "super power". But now they have nothing to offer in that regard to the world other than being "anti-Western", whatever that means. Meanwhile, the countries they are claiming as partners (especially India and China) are trying very hard to develop export economies integrated into world goods and financial markets.
Russia under Putin has already made a pariah of itself, even before their recent aggression. And should it somehow beat Ukraine, it's only going to make things worse. Russia does not have an economic plan nor does it have a social plan.
