The tweeter also linked to a recent related substack article he wrote. These are the money quotes for me:

If the current war has done nothing else, it ought to have once and for all disabused the shallow minds of the western intelligentsia that an economy based on the financialization of EVERYTHING is not stronger than an economy based on actual production of stuff.

A two-year-long high-intensity conflict has revealed in unmistakable terms that deindustrialized nations are utterly incapable of prosecuting modern industrial warfare.

In a recent discussion between Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen, Hudson said that the sanctions were a windfall for Russia, it was a form of protectionism for Russia and the effects all fell on Western Europe, specifically on Germany.

Alexander agreed but said he thinks there's a more important reason their economy has done so well based on what a friend told him who used to be the treasurer for a huge Russian company:

Up until the 2008 financial crisis and to a great extent right up till 2022, the entire Russian economic system was completely permeated by Western businesses, companies, providers of funding and insurance and various types of services, helping in car production, helping in all sorts of business enterprises. And the money they were making was all flowing back to Europe principally, less to the US. It was in effect rents paid by the Russians to the Europeans. That all stopped completely in 2022. And suddenly there's more money in Russia because the rents aren't moving westward, and it's driving an investment boom in Russia because that capital has to be used.