And they're proving it. The Western block is around a billion people. There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet now.

You can buy fresh Mexican advocates from any grocery chain anywhere in Russia (the logistics behind that are not trivial). As can you Japanese whiskey, Korean appliances, Chinese cars and a whole other host of products that Soviet citizens could have never dreamed of.

Oh good maybe they can finally use some of their boondoggle nuclear cargo ships too

It’s comical to call cargo ships a boondoggle when the US can currently produce no more than ten per year (of the non-nuclear variety).

Seriously. And Canada is having real problems right now due to lack of adequate icebreakers.

in the UN votes condemning russian aggression and condemning russian annexations, russia received the support of fewer than 3% of countries in the world, representing less than 3% of people in the world, including themselves

seems they failed to prove they aren't isolated

Update on the SCO: https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-strengthens-relati...

> Russia is desperate to prove they aren't isolated internationally.

BRICS make up 40% of the world's population.

how much is made up by the R?

grouping the R in with the BICS doesn't seem appropriate anymore

~140 million or less than 5%.

And they have, particularly when overwhelming Western sanctions failed to shock the Russian economy and society to collapse.

Remember when Biden triumphantly announced that the ruble was reduced to "rubble"? That was the objective, and it failed catastrophically.

So, how is that Russian economy doing now? From sources not controlled by the Kremlin?

Russia expected (September 2022) [1]:

2022: -2.9% decline

2023: hoping for slight growth, possibility of slight decline

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IMF observed/predicts (January 2023) [2]:

2022: -2.2% decline

2023: slight growth

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[1] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-economy-contr...

[2] - https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS

Try YouTube. Plenty of Westerners there posting videos of daily life.