Through the mastery of double negatives, dodging and burning, and other darkroom deceits, talented photographers including Wanda Wulz and Bill Brandt (whose work is the subject of an upcoming MoMA retrospective) made the medium as unreliably personal as the most fantastical painters had ever achieved on canvas.
My personal expectation is that, over the medium term, things will not be pretty but that Putin will find a way to muddle through by making temporary concessions to whichever group seems most threatening at the moment.