Yes, as a client state to China, as North Korea is now. And when China and India flare up, Russia will be forced to choose China. Their options only become more narrow, so long as Putin remains in control.

...with a weaker bluff. It's childish, like the toothless sanctioning of Biden and Hilary Clinton. Or threatening international volunteers for the Ukrainians with legal action, while inviting Syrian mercenaries at the time. The noises coming out of the Kremlin have become farcical.

The eastern autocratic dictatorship that is guilty of all your points as well? Is that who you mean?

What the west should have done was Marshal Plan eastern Europe. Build them up with loans and investments rather let them wallow in corruption and poverty. Look at Japan and Germany today, compared to Russia. It was a cruel, conscious choice to use them as a cheap labor stock. And now we have to deal with the results: peace in our time? Or checking an aggressor before he starts World War III.

It's hilarious that the Azov Battalion was formed from a bunch of racist rednecks because Russia invaded Crimea. And now you use it as the justification to for another invasion? Russia needs to learn to stay in it's lane.

As for Wagner Group, it is directly operated as a thinly veiled proxy army. They are a Kremlin asset whose leaders flash Nazi insignia as much as those Azov yokels. I wonder how the Ukrainian denazifacation of Wagner is going in Kyiv? Three foiled assassination attempts so far...