Do their energy exports count as soft power? Arguably that was working quite well, until they further expanded in to Ukraine.

I think they count as soft power, but on the energy front, everyone (even Europe itself) completely overestimated how strong it was. Russia very much expected that energy dependency would keep Europe out of the conflict, even if it would put them on a path towards breaking that dependency in the long term. No one seemed to truly expect that the reaction would be so strong that it'd take less than a year to mostly eliminate that dependency.

I would count that as a different kind of power, distinction from soft and hard. Maybe "commercial power"? "Trading power"?

To me soft power sounds more like culture - being appealing to other country's populations.

In fact that went very poorly. They cut off gas to Europe in an attempt to freeze them and make them come to the bargaining table, but Europe responded very strongly and largely still supports Ukraine. The winter was even very mild. In cutting off the crutch, Russia forced Europe to go cold turkey instead of delaying it for a decade like they wanted to. Now Russia has to settle for selling the gas to other places at a steep discount, and Europe may never buy Russian gas again.

There's even a fun parallel to draw with the floating LNG terminals off the coast and WWII floating harbors for Normandy

True, but presumably because of the fear of losing energy supply, Europe chose _not_ to react to earlier provocations, including the invasion of the Crimea.

Yes, the whole salami slice expansion method seems to be designed, to use other diplomats as an abblative layer for empire expansion. Basically using your oponents wish for peace to slowly expand creeping.

And there is a whole diplomat generation standing by to be useful idiots again if not an example is placed like a statue every 3 generations.