He measured NATO’s response
To attacking a non-NATO country. NATO's purpose is not to defend random places and support random revolutions and occupations around the world - despite what the US thinks, and despite how much we sympathise with Ukraine - but to defend each other. Poland just bought hundreds of tanks, and we got to see where we are missing things. And as shitty the rift is with the US, Russia now has a rearming EU to worry about.
he found a way to fight wars and not break
He put the country on a war economy which is going to cause an insane recession if not an outright collapse if the war ends. They won't even be able to go back to their pre-war military strength. This was always an option, coming back from it is not.
he confirmed that the resource exports money source can be reoriented to other countries than the West
At insanely low prices, and by creating even more dependencies on untrustworthy partners. Who's to say China won't use the new dependency to invade Russia? Can Russia depend on that?
They proved that to themselves too and reacted. Changed the military doctrine, evolved new tactics and strategy, built new MIC production chains.
It went from an army that could threaten Europe to one that could threaten Ukraine. I know, drones are the new thing, but all of Russia's adversaries have much greater manufacturing capabilities than Russia, Russia is not going to outproduce the West or China in drones. Just to mention, Ukraine and Russia are largely peers in drone warfare, except all those drones are being blown up in Ukraine. Europe is stockpiling. In the meantime, they lost their whole Soviet stockpile of armor, and a sizeable chunk of their airforce.
EU’s defense spending increasing is at the expense of other things.
This is the new big lie of Russia. No, defense spending is coming from loans, basically a credit line we didn't use because the Germans were jacking off to austerity. How that works is that if we overdo it, we'll see more inflation, so you can check when we overdid it. Social spending is not being cut, there are maybe some programs somewhere, but that neolib shit has been going on forever, we've been fighting it forever, it's just now Russia saying "you'll all be poor". Inflation is back to normal levels, and if anything, increased public spending will increase wages across the EU.
The economy is not completely wrecked.
Just look at the numbers. It's a war economy. 40% of the Russian budget is going towards the army, and if the war ends or this money runs out - that's 2027/28 if we're being generous - you're going from a labour shortage to 10% unemployment. That's "dissolution of the USSR" level economic turmoil.