Do you seriously think that Putin invaded Ukraine not knowing they would get sanctioned by the entire Western world and losing hundreds of billions of their oligarchs’ money?

I’ve heard people say that United Russia is made up of two main components - the Oligarchs and the Siloviki (the security and intelligence complex). Occasionally they struggle for power internally but since Putin is strongly of the silovik background, the oligarchs have been subordinated to the siloviki for a long time.

I don’t understand the complexities of Russian politics enough to have a firm view, but it’s possible that the Oligarchs losing a bunch of money (and therefore power) actually benefitted the Siloviki faction inside United Russia. That goes hand in hand with the idea that by sanctioning the Oligarchs, the West actually threw away their best chance at overthrowing Putin internally via some sort of Oligarch-backed coup.

Edit: preemptive apologies to Russian speakers for probably butchering the grammatical forms.