The appeal of the Russian market, perceived as an El Dorado by Westerners, stems from a historical strategic blindness. For centuries, the West has deluded itself into believing that trade can integrate Russia as a rational and peaceful player in the global economy.

However, this vision is fundamentally flawed. For the Kremlin, from the Tsarist era to the present day, trade is not an end in itself, but a pure instrument of power. It is a means of acquiring technology and capital to strengthen its military apparatus and consolidate its regime, while weakening its adversaries.

As historian Françoise Thom demonstrates, Russia tirelessly repeats a “cycle of predation”: it attracts foreign investors to modernize, then plunders or expels them once its objectives have been achieved.

The West, confusing its own hopes with Russian reality, has thus continually financed its own adversary. It has never understood the Kremlin's strategy of disguising its quest for power as economic cooperation. Lenin cynically summed it up: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”