It's thanks to oil, gas and minerals exports they have managed to keep the russian economy going. Not thanks to entrepreneurship or some russian made products. They also stole a lot of western companies and their assets.
When the government said businesses must be locally owned, of course the bandits with money (aka oligarchs) saw the opportunity and suddenly became company-owners left and right. I guess it's "the West"'s fault that they created space for the bandits to move in (and not Putin's fault that he forced "the West" to sanction the country because of invasion). If we go further up the "cause and effect" chain it must be NATO's fault for expanding into East Europe. ;) .. but why wouldn't Eastern European countries want to join NATO, considering their large neighbor to the East still have imperialistic dreams.
