This is an important distinction. The majority of the aerospace know-how in the Soviet Union came from Ukraine, not from Russia.

What you’re missing is that factories were built in Ukraine as a part of reconstruction after WW2, but engineers were mostly Russian, relocated from Russia.

These days pretty much all Ukrainian space industry is dead, and it was dead even before war. Most competent people left for Russia or USA. Yes, they still provided some components just because it was cheaper to build them in the original factory, but in a last few years Russia just replaced all Ukraine components. Antares had Ukrainian fuel tanks I believe, but I doubt it’ll last long.

Regarding engineers, I don't think that's true at all — as a simple example, two of the three lead engineers on the Soviet space program were from Ukraine.

And the USSR actually traded with the West. Made tons of money selling oil, gas and grain. Putin's actions are devoid of economic logic.

The political logic works even if Russia’s economy tanks he can point to people outside the country as scapegoats. If Russia had normal trade relations with other countries and everything was in shambles then the only blame would be internal.

The crazy thing is their population was crashing so fast adding territory for the people is more important than adding territory for the natural resources.

> The crazy thing is their population was crashing so fast

Basically the case of every eastern european country since fall of communism