The Russians are no slouches when it comes to oil work, but they were out of circulation from 1940 through 2000. The techs involved came a long way in that time. Foreigners—most notably supermajor BP and services firms Halliburton and Schlumberger—are responsible for half(ish) of contemporary Russia’s output. Any broad-scale removal of Western firms from the mix would have catastrophic impacts upon oil production throughout the entire former Soviet space. The Ukraine War is stress-testing that theory.
