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Originally Posted by FlameOn
Taking over the world was more of the CCCP's goal and never really Putin's. It's very interesting if you follow Putin's rise to power from various docs like like "Putin's Way", "Inside Putin's Russia" and "Putin: A Russian Spy Story", you can see his mentality and how it shifts from his original goals of restoring Russia to it's cold war greatness, to now seemingly just maintaining his own power by bringing down everyone to Russia's level.
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I get the idea that Russia's game, historically anyways, is all about the long game. They constantly seem to be pushing the envelope.
You may be right that Putin is just pandering to this idea of expansion to maintain his own grip on power, but the practical effect is Russia invading surrounding nations. Post-USSR it seemed to start out in places that nobody paid much attention to, largely in the North Caucasus. However, more recently the invasions seem to be getting bolder and bolder, like the Crimea. They also seem to be actively collapsing the governments of surrounding nations, with the purpose of annexing portions of them.
I honestly think that if the Russians had an expanding and healthy population, we'd be seeing them implementing their current strategy on a much larger scale.