>>16103070They could've warmed up to the west or at the bare minimum just stayed on the same course and just worked on improving their domestic situation, and things would've been fine. Not great, but fine. Instead they went and did something so stupid that it's hard to fathom why it was even done in the first place. I think most people don't realize the gravity of the situation. In one fell swoop, Russia lost almost all of it's foreign investments, lost a lot of their own high skilled workers (the ones they had at least), all the foreign companies that were helping them drill for oil and gas, their largest customer base, Europe, now considers them to be a pariah state and will eventually no longer even buy oil and gas from them, which is their main source of income, it's like the exact definition of biting the hand that feeds
