They ware a perfectly rational actor so far, Europe and the west in general has mostly just spouted empty platitudes and always blinked first. Nothing happened

They ware a perfectly rational actor so far, Europe and the west in general has mostly just spouted empty platitudes and always blinked first. Nothing happened with the two Chechenyan wars, with Georgia, nobody did anything about Syrian cities being bombed to rubble and the 2014 sanctions post-Crimea ware rather weak. During that time everybody continued to buy gas, oil, electricity, fertilizer, aluminium and titanium. Clearly, the west did not care about things like that and it would be business like normal. Except that this time it was found out there's a limit.