What could Russia do back then anyway. You forget that when Putin came into power the Russian military was in shambles and they had an ongoing conflict on Chechnya funded by the Muslim world and the US. Most people back then expected Russia to fragment again.
Russia only managed to start army modernization in the late 2000s. Even so they did the conflict on Georgia in 2008 before their armed forces had modernized. They still easily won it with basically Soviet era equipment.
There were talks but China back in the 1990s had limited need for energy imports in general. Up to like 1993 China was self sufficient in oil for example. Russia made contracts with Japan in the late 1990s to explore gas deposits in Sakhalin island and sell it to Japan and later South Korea as LNG. In the early 2000s Russia tried to convince China into the Altai gas pipeline project. This would have been a West bound pipeline which would be the cheapest to build for Russia since it was the closest route from existing Russian gas resources to the Chinese border. China scrapped the project because they had already invested in gas pipelines from Central Asia. A route similar to Power of Siberia 2 was also proposed by Russia. But China back then wanted its own gas supply independent of the European one. It was hard for the Russians to justify the massive project cost to build all new extraction facilities and transport pipes over such a long route. For reference Power of Siberia is 3968 km long and NordStream is 1222 km long. That is just the pipes, the gas fields are much more expensive to develop, and are still in the process of ramping up.
It started as a bunch of people who do not like the fact Putin forced them to pay taxes and salaries.
The Russian government also decided it had to control the "commanding heights" of the economy. This means energy companies, military industrial complex, and part of the communications sector. The military industrial complex was easy to nationalize since most of it was bankrupt, but getting the energy companies back, and the communications sector under control was harder. Try reading about Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Yukos Oil for example. The communications sector was a platform for oligarchs to control Russian politics and destabilize the country. So Putin made sure they had to concede their companies to more pliable control interests. This includes oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky.
Iran has quite a lot of gas resource but it needs massive investment to get out and transport. Getting Iranian gas into Europe via pipe would not be that easy since the route would be quite long and pass way too many countries. Good luck getting that done in less than a decade even if you had all the deals signed.
If it ever becomes a problem Russia does have APS like Arena-M. It can be installed on T-72 or T-90.
Afghanit APS is supposed to come standard with T-14 when that comes out.
I assume they would use fighter bombers and helicopters in the open.
No way. Back when Yeltsin was in power the Communists and opposition were much stronger really. To the point Yeltsin sent tanks against the Russian Duma and basically assumed dictatorial powers. Today the Communists are really weak opposition, it is just that the other parties are even weaker.
If they stop paying for oil and gas, do they assume Russia would continue supply out of the goodness of their hearts? Are these people idiots or something?
The Russian ruble is way undervalued. Russia has a GDP (PPP) close to that of Germany.
Russia is a huge supplier of commodities. Not just oil and natural gas but also aluminium, titanium, palladium, and others.
NATO is already sending ships into the South China Sea. They might not call it a NATO deployment but all those countries are in NATO.
Yes, because China didn't have a conflict with Vietnam in 1979. Don't be silly.
