One would have to be an imbecile to believe that.
Russia doesn't have the capability of taking over multiple nations against their wills.
The Russians were able to takeover the part of Ukraine they did ONLY because the people there no longer wanted to be part of Ukraine after the illegal 2014 that we helped foment.
The annexed part of Ukraine was and is ethnically or culturally Russian.
Oh yeah. Putin regretted the loss of territory, population, natural resources and industrial capacity after the fall of your USSR motherland.
Putin is not enamored with Mandami or Stalinist communism but he didn’t like the fact that Russia shrunk by every metric and in every way. Kind of like Peter the Great to Putin the midget.
Here’s what your little man said:
“Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.”