Paola Tamma, Douglas Busvine, Victor Jack,"Economic meltdown gives Putin a route back to Soviet repression" https://www.politico.eu/article/economic-meltdown-russia-putin-soviet-repression/

«The question now is whether Moscow can insulate its broader economy, or whether Putin's plan is, in fact, the opposite. Collapsing the economy and markets, while printing an unbacked currency, creates a historic opportunity to expropriate the oligarchs as a class when markets reopen and the companies trade as penny stocks. That would sap the power of Putin's potential rivals, while he remained protected by the security apparatus.»

Only mentioned in passing and then concentrating on the financial and economic fallout Western sanctions have on Russia (and the dilemma China is put into), the article raises the idea that crippling Russia's economy could not only be factored in by Putin but welcomed. It would provide him with a way back to the authoritarian, repressive, poverty-stricken Soviet Union.