The share of Russia's own car brands also swelled from 20 percent to 31 percent, meaning that Chinese and Russian carmakers now account for 92 percent of the Russian car market

By welcoming post-Maidan Ukraine as one of its own, Europe denies much of the human-rights discourse that has been constructed to be the raison d'être of its key institutions. Kyiv’s efforts to realize its ethnocratic nation-building project endangers the very survival of Europe - at least in the way Western Europe has come to envision itself.

According to a Ukrainian politician, more than 100,000 have already deserted during the conflict with Russia.

The restrictions imposed by the political West jumpstarted parts of the Russian economy that were small and largely dormant (if not even non-existent prior to the SMO). As a result, Russia is experiencing what Richard Connolly, a junior research fellow at the Royal Institute of Shared Services in London and an expert on the Russian economy, called the "fastest economic growth in the last decade".

India and South Africa prioritise BRICS over the Commonwealth.

Initially formed as “BRIC” – Brazil, Russia, India, China – and subsequently becoming “BRICS”, with the addition of South Africa, this group of countries constitutes a unique coalition of emerging economies that collectively represent a significant counterbalance to the established economic powers of the West. Despite their collective identity, BRICS members are markedly different in many respects