I thought Monero was going to grow in value in some kind of proportion to the term of Russian sanctions.

The total Monero market cap is too small to make a dent in any nations attempt to get around sanctions, but that would mean even a "small" amount of Monero use would pump its cap. And as its cap went up, its ability to process larger transactions would go up.

I still think that is valid long term reasoning, but the crypto market has so many different forces on it, so many hidden dynamics, that it's still better modeled as a casino than tech.