The special measure they took was to ignore western edict on cutting trade with Russia. That was literally the deciding factor in this war.
They helped stabilize Russian economy, replaced sanctioned goods, and gave access to a lot of tech such as drones and chips that are necessary for modern military production.
It's pretty clear that there was no saving Syria, but what's happening there now isn't exactly a big win for the west either. The whole country is a powder keg, and in a state of civil war. The west is now stuck pouring resources into propping up yet another proxy. Also, not sure what you mean regarding Hezbollah. Last I checked they were still around and doing fine.
Russia already sells S400 systems to India and Turkey, so if they were worried about that they wouldn't be selling them externally at all. It's far easier for spies to gather data on these system in countries that are friendly with the west. Also worth noting that Russia already has next gen systems like S500, so what they learn using S400s can be applied to their design. The US gets to see older Russian or Chinese tech at the expense of exposing their best tech. That's a good trade. Recall that the primary weakness the US has is the fact that it's deindustrialized. Russia and China are able to produce new systems easily, the US is not.
Also, not sure why you say that Russia doesn't have a ton of production capacity when Russia is outproducing all of NATO.
China already got to test their systems with the Pakistan vs India situation I believe. Russia has already tested them against Ukraine.
The key would be testing against most advanced US systems like F35 and B2. These are the real danger because if they can slip in undetected they can deliver a nuke. Learning how they work and that you can track them reliably is essential. The trade off is that the US learns more about systems like S400 is entirely worth it because it's likely not possible to mitigate the fact that they can detect these jets. You'd basically have to go back to the drawing board and design a whole new jet at that point. And given that the US can't even get rare earth right now, that's gonna be a big challenge.
I agree that both Russia and China want to avoid a direct conflict with the US as long as possible. It makes sense to do so because time is on their side. However, a big aspect of using that time wisely is to learn as much as possible about the US. Russia was able to deal with DPRK as a direct result of US cutting Russia out of western financial system. The threat of secondary sanctions is what was holding Russia back before.
For example despite the staggering sanctions on Russia they haven’t moved to destroy dollar hegemony because they don’t want to anger the US and Trump and because they believe if they don’t they’ll get their stolen $300 billion dollars back held by the west.
I disagree there, dedollarization is happening at a staggering rate right now and Russia is at the centre of that. Just because they're not making bombastic statements doesn't mean they're not making every effort to contain the US. Boiling the frog is the correct approach because it minimizes the risk of all out nuclear holocaust, while gradually constricting western power.
My prediction is that the collapse of the west will be internal and it will be driven by economic woes. Both the US and EU economies are teetering on the brink already, and this is translating into internal polarization as the standard of living continues to collapse. The ideal scenario for Russia and China is precisely what's happening now with US being drawn into protracted conflicts that stretch the US past its limits.
The use of nukes is what worries me the most.
I imagine both Russia and China are quite eager for an opportunity to test their weapons and defense systems against the US in Iran.
This kind of reminds me of stuff like stable diffusion around 3-4 years ago. It was like oh it's so cute how it can make a 64x64 image that sort of looks like something. Fast forward to today and these things are generating high resolution photorealistic images. I'm expecting that robots will be moving as fluidly as humans and will be navigating environments with ease within a few years.
I generally agree, the logistics are very much against the US here.
Russia and China are unlikely to provide direct military support, but they obviously aren't going to stand by and provide both political and material support. China wasn't engaged in Ukraine directly either, but certainly wouldn't say they just stood by this whole time either.
this is what happens when you spend 30 years smelling your own farts
And who'd be destroying the US economy then I ask you?
Yup, very much agree.