From the Aviation Week article that flexie linked:
"The team acknowledges that the project is in its earliest stages, and many key challenges remain before a viable prototype can be built."
They don't actually say it, but it sounds like they've only got computer models to work with at this point. Not very likely that they've actually cracked it.
Push the oil and natural gas markets lower, pile on all the other factors pushing them down right now, and further harm Russia's economy.
I'm half joking, but I'd keep an eye out for more unusual energy related press releases, to see if that'll confirm that it's a media blitz aimed at the oil market etc.
For what it's worth, in the Google [X] talk last year, they briefly mentioned running actual plasma confinement experiments (although I guess not reaching fusion conditions or that would probably have been publicized).
They don't actually say it, but it sounds like they've only got computer models to work with at this point. Not very likely that they've actually cracked it.