Circumventing sanctions and strengthening ties with the likes of China, Iran and North Korea has allowed him to pivot his economy on to a war footing.

Ah yes, they only did it with the help a country that is about to collapse any moment, a pariah state in the Middle east and the gulag-country where everyone is starving. At the start of the war the liberals were gleefully saying how Russia's GDP is lower than that of Texas, and yet with the help of three (supposedly poor) countries they were able to out-produce and out-match the might of the combined power of Western rich and thriving economies. I know I shouldn't let it, but liberal cognitive dissonance really annoys me.