The point is that since the collapse, they have become increasingly capitalist, and are self serving enough to cut off european natural gas pipelines so they can continue to manufacture their own industrial fabrication centers. With a position to freely trade with China and the Mongol Hordes of the Silk Road, they have a back door into one of the World's last uptapped goody baskets. While we and other Western nations become more dependent on foreign suppliers of cheap goods and commodities, Russia has made huge bounds in restoring their ability to turn raw goods like steel and textiles into durable goods (guns, cars, freighters, fashion, & plastics) . With their own energy sources, they can supply themselves, something that the Anglocentric nations are losing bit by bit, as shown by the gas spikes after Katrina and Rita, or in this case, the sudden loss of fuel to run the factories in the eastern european industrial bloc, like Germany, the BeNeLux belt, and the Danube-Slav mega-industries (like steel, plastics, textiles, etc), and the Shipping/Strategic centers connecting the inland to the North Sea and the Mediterranian.
Or that's what I see. How does it look to you?
