memes

That's correct, basically what happened was that the sanctions created a whole bunch of business niches domestically that started being filled. The west also made a brilliant move of going after all the Russian oligarchs forcing them to invest domestically, which amounted to the west doing capital controls for Russia. I'm guessing that the west thought they could strong arm China and India to join the sanctions regime, which would have done a lot more damage. Instead, what we're seeing is that a whole new economic bloc is now forming outside western financial sphere. This is going to be taught in the history books as the miscalculation that ended western hegemony.