Everybody has seen the narrative that Russia attacked Ukraine because Putin is trying to reclaim territories of USSR and that if Ukraine falls then Russia will go after other countries in Europe.
However, if expansionism is the goal, then why isn’t Russia invading places like Kazakhstan, Georgia, or Uzbekistan. These are much weaker countries that don’t have NATO support. Kazakhstan in particular has a huge territory and plenty of natural resources. It would be far easier for Russia to invade a country like Kazakhstan than Ukraine, yet Russia seems to be able to coexist with these countries just fine.
Personally, I don’t see how this can be reconciled with the whole imperialism narrative the west is trying to push.
Forgive my ignorance, but I often read comments about how Russia was gutted in the 90s after the destruction of the USSR by neoliberal policy/privatization. But if so, how did it meaningfully manage to retain sovereignty in a way that other countries who were made vassals were stripped of theirs? Is it mostly just that domestic Russian capitalists were powerful enough that they were the ones doing the lions share of the looting and that’s why western capitalists still couldn’t subsume them like they wanted?
Neoliberal privatization is how Russia got its oligarchs, but a lot of state industry was preserved as well. When Putin got in charge, he started pushing a more sovereign policy and the state managed to assert itself over the business interests in the end. The state takes a much more active role in managing economy in Russia than in western countries, and financial capital is not allowed to dominate.