[oytis]

Russian here (also have taken part in protests 2012-2013). I believe isolating just one factor for the correlation might give deceiving results. It is true that protest movement has been much less active since 2014, it is also true that Russian economy is in crisis since 2014, but I don't think that the latter was the reason for the former.

Rather

1) As protests of 2012-2013 have failed despite the largest headcount in modern Russian history, people feel demoralized. That works pretty universally the same, (see international Occupy movement for instance).

2) The occupation of Crimea and Donbass region in 2014 made a split in Russian society deeper. Protests of 2012-2013 tried to unite liberal democrats, nationalists and communists, and most of the latter two support Russian aggression. So no union is possible any more.

3) Finally a lot of politically active people have left the country around 2014 (again because of demoralizing effect of both failed protests and successful occupation of Ukrainian territories).

So my opinion on the original topic is that it's worth limiting any collaboration with authoritarian regimes. Such regimes more often crash because of inability to solve their problems than because of successful protest movements, so it's better to increase probablility of the first scenario.