> I keep hearing from Western pundits that Russian economy is tanking, but isn't it the other way around?
Last time I've checked Russia had to purchase arms from Iran because they are no longer able to produce those themselves due to severed supply from Europe, while plenty of european countries are increasing military development and production.
Russia is also forced to disassembly some of their passenger planes for spare parts because they no longer can ship those from Airbus or Boeing.
Russia can no longer import semiconductors from US/Europe, Taiwan, Korea or Japan. This effectively stopped their high-tech industry from working. This hit their civil and military aviation (which includes production of their AA, CM and cruise missiles, and passenger plane program).
Civilian production is also seriously affected by the sanctions. Lada cars are now produced in very basic variant due to no access to parts from EU or Asia.
Russia is also recommissioning soviet-era arms because they are no longer able to use their "modern" tech without weakening their military on other fronts.
Because Russian government is de facto a mafia state, the govt itself considers large companies ran by people outside of oligarchy a threat to itself, meaning that Russia has no national industry it can turn to for filling in the gaps created by sanctions:
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501382714427166721
Bank of Russia is doing whatever it can to protect country's economy from crisis, but they are doing it in same way that Turkey does: through selling their reserves. They can't do that forever.