As I posted earlier, this is not the Russia of old, which was really the USSR. They no longer have the eastern state hordes of cannon fodder to throw into the fray. Nor do they have a Stalinist apparatus in place to command sacrifice out of fear. Their military is ruptured in body and soul. To date they have not been able to crush the chechens, who are at their very border. That said, they are still Russians and hopefully that still counts for something.
But they still have thousands of megatons of thermonuclear weapons at their disposal. Another incident like Beslan, and Grozny may become a radioactive crater.