[Rashputin]

Of course he does, he's Russian. The only thing that took the Russian desire for such an empire off the table was that single lifetime long spasm of stupidity called the “Soviet Union”. Had Russia not collapsed they'd have been in control of large parts of what was the Ottoman empire anyway and probably wouldn't have fallen apart for a second time in the 1990s. One thing for sure, the Europeans wouldn't have gotten the blanket protection that cost the US taxpayer so much over the past sixty years.

Once Europe gets over their current stupidity and foreordained financial collapse, they can put the alliances of the past back in place and alternate between tussles with one another and with Russia over who will be the top dog like they used to. Just as it often has in the past, it all comes down to how preoccupied the Ottoman Empire is with expanding itself throughout the Muslim world rather than wrangling over Western or Northern borders.

[goldstategop]

Most Russians have regarded the collapse of the USSR as a tragedy. Still, there are no plans to bring together the CIS states into a new political union. A Eurasian Union would be an economic common market like the EU. But there’s no real appetite to run things from Moscow. If reintegration occurs, it will be an evolutionary process that could decades. Any attempt to reconstitute a Greater Russian state would be a disaster. Russian conservatives in United Russia are aware of how far they want to go. First and foremost is the preservation of Russian statehood. This takes precedence over any future union.