The Russians are not interested in reacquiring the parts of the "near abroad" that are non-Slavic. And no pan-Slavic union is possible without Ukraine. Belarus doesn't offer anything valuable or else it would have reabsorbed years ago. The FSB and the Russian Army have their hands full in Chenchya so its highly unlikely you'll see Russia seeking military adventures abroad in the forseeable future. Russians may be nostalgic about their lost superpower status but it doesn't mean they want to go back to the days when Russia subsidizied the outlying posts of the Empire.
The Stalinist system worked while its strategic posture was rational. What destroyed it was the insane expansionism of the Brezhnev era. Building a powerful blue water navy AND a massive expansion of land forces AND expensive proxy states in the third world AND a very expensive shift from light, relatively low tech fighters like the Mig-21 and Mig-23 to much more expensive fighters competitive with the F-16 and F-15 like the Mig-29, Mig-31, and Su-27/30.
So the Soviet Union, in effect, can be restored on a smaller scale including the Slavic parts of Mother Russia. Not trying to be a global superpower.
The Russian intelligentsia are mad over Putin's moves but the man in the street is not. The man in the street sees the Yeltsin era as a kind of Weimar, a nightmare time of squalor, depravity and national humiliation. He has no interest in fighting for the oligarchs. There is indeed, something in the Russian national character that enjoys seeing the high and mighty brought low, be they boyars, kulaks, Old Bolsheviks, or oligarchs.