eh my main point was to explain how russian external politics mesh with russian internal politics. it's not 1:1 by any measure, but through all of this russian govt was going through far right playbook, line by line

yeah this might be a stretch, but do you remember if there were anything close to weapon transfers like now in 2014 or 2008? chechen wars weren't even really reacted to, except for 1. human rights abuses, and 2. for countries that already had a grudge with russia. in both cases, the most common response was strongly worded letter. for example, poland accepted 90k of chechen refugees; however this did exactly nothing against destruction of grozny, and most importantly was no impediment to gaining internal recognition for putin

Throughout all of their territorial expansions before WW2, the Germany military force did not get significantly weakened.

and we're in very good situation that russians are this incompetent. and it's not the first time either: secondary objective of chechen wars, aside from that above, was remaking public image of russian army as a capable force, because failure in afghanistan was still a fresh memory. results were, so to speak, suboptimal

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, has been a disaster for Russia

now, after 1.5 years of full scale war you can say that, but it was far from obvious two years ago or on 2014

1991 iraq war and invasion of afghanistan at least had clearly stated rationale and objectives, nothing like nebulous drivel you'll hear from russians about satanist gay nazis threatening russian sphere of influence

Ukraine has always been in Russian sphere (if not outright part of Russia) and is considered a geostrategic + ideological priority for Russia. Kiev for example is the birthplace of the Russian people.

through history ukraine had much more western influence than russia, you can see borders of historical states even today if you know what you're looking for. election results, railway density, dominant religion, language, types of industry present and many other factors delineate cleanly former borders of polish-lithuanian commonwealth, for example. especially for some last 300 years or so ukrainians got increasingly strong opinions on whether they are part of that russian world or not. (i'd like to notice that this line of propaganda, the one when novorossia was introduced and such was only heated up after 2010 or so, i don't know exactly why)

this propaganda for internal consumption is not the only russian objective however. they still can try to stir shit in moldova or pollute western information space with their psyops, i don't think they have ever stopped, probably they take overtime instead, even if prigozhin's part is out. if you haven't heard of this man, look up konstantin malofeev