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There are two elements to this - the system and dollars. The systems are CHIPS (used for clearing, which is in US Dollars) and SWIFT used for interbank communication. Russia was severely cut off from both. Countries can trade in any currency they want, but the international system is standardised around the dollar and CHIPs and SWIFT make it fast and efficient.
Lets say Russia wanted to buy $50m of oil from UAE. It would involve a Russian bank and a UAE bank handling the money and both would have CHIPS accounts. A Russian bank would place an order via SWIFT for $50m to the UAE bank via its CHIPS account. The money would be transferred to the UAE banks account and out to the UAE. This seems pointless for 1 transaction, but actually there are many 1000s of different transactions happening every day in different directions, and the way clearing happens instead of moving $50m from one bank to another, it will look at all the other transactions both banks are making with everyone else across the day and just move the correct overall amount out.
So $50m does move from one bank to the other, but it's part of all the other transactions going on making it simpler for both banks. For example maybe at the same time the UAE bank is transferring $30m to another bank in another country; so at the end of the day it'll get $20m from CHIPs.
When Russia was cut off, there weren't really other good routes to make that trade. Also people don't want Roubles. So normally Russia and Russian banks buy and hold Dollars, and use that when they need to trade. Russia was locked out of this, so it now had to buy $50m of oil but using Roubles which the UAE bank didn't want or need. This means either Russia had to find other ways to get the $50m or it paid way more in Roubles than the $ amount to buy enough Dirhem so that the UAE would accept the money.
However, as you rightly point out - why would countries be so reliant on the $ and the US like this? Up until now, people trusted the Dollar and the US to keep the system open and functioning. But first the Ukraine war sanctions and now certainly the Iran war have shown to the world that the Dollar and current systems are entirely under US control. Even though the EU was against Russia in the Ukraine war, they have also been moving to put in new systems so they're not over reliant on the US systems after seeing what happened with the CHIPS/SWIFT sanctions. Those sanctions were really seen as the "nuclear" option when it happened, and people never thought anyone would actually do that.
Now the Trump is again emphasising how reliant the world was on US stability, and US stability is seemingly gone. Tarrifs, threats to invade Greenland, disparaging allies, and Iran - all have shown that the US is unreliable and unstable. So now the EU and many other countries (including China) are accelerating the process to move away from being so reliant on the US Dollar and the USA. It will have huge consequences for the USA and the world, and even if the Iran war ends tomorrow and a decent president is elected in 2028, the damage is done. No one trusts the US political system any more - it has been shown to be unstable and capricious, and entirely dependent on the whims of the US president. The supposed "checks and balances" are non-existent: the courts and congress have done nothing to stop this mess. So everyone is reducing their "exposure" to the risk of being too reliant on the USA and it's financial systems.
It really doesn't matter any more if the Democrats win congress and the white house. It will just be seen as a period of calm before the next Trump comes along. We've already had that once with Biden coming in after Trumps first term, and Trumps second is even worse. And it's not about Trump specifically - he'll be gone in a few years, but the world has been shown that any nutter in the white house can do what they want, plus the Republicans are clearly bat-shit crazy. And whats to say the Democrats don't also put someone bat shit crazy into the white house in the future? All trust in the US is gone and it can't be rebuilt.