When it comes to actual real power, economic, soft, military, or whatever, Russia has a smaller GDP than Italy. If you imagine Italy trying to push the US 'out of the picture' so they could have 'free reign' in Europe, you can see how ridiculous Russia's 'geopolitics' is.

What's really happening is that Putin's domestic power and legitimacy stems from his ability to be a plausible cosplay Bismark while keeping the kleptocrats that are robbing the Russian people happy.

If push comes to anything close to a shove, there's simply no way Russia can contend with any of its neighbors, all of whom are just way more powerful (India, China, Japan, South Korea) or in actual world-leading blocs (EU members, NATO members, etc). That won't change until the Russian economy and society itself changes, and that's impossible without substantial reassessment and reorganization that would undoubtedly include the end of Putin's regime.

who will fund the election campaigns and favorable media coverage for the agreeable candidates and parties?

whose arms will they buy and whose military bases will they build to defend themselves against each other and/or what little is left of Russia and/or China?

whose companies will get contracts for resource extraction and favorable conditions to operate there?

...

the collapse of Russia would be a greater boon to the US than the WWII was, and had Russia been a benevolent democracy, it would've been at least halfway there by now

And for the people in Russia.

I hope there's a chance that'll happen if indeed Putin has an illness and is dead soon

> the US wants Russia broken down into two dozen irrelevant ethnostates

That's delusional and was what I was replying to.