Russia is acting the thug, no doubt, but given that we have been told ad nauseum by GOP keaders, people on Fox News, Democrats, Kerry and Obama, too, that the U.S. is the last remaining superpower, it could easily be said that Russia cannot conquer the world, much less most of Eurasia.
Sure, they could cause a major mess, but I doubt that it would extend beyond Eastern Europe, and were they to even do that, a complete isolation of them in regards to oil, banking, commerce, etc, would destroy their stock market and the Russian oligarchs in and outside of Russia would remove Putin fast.
The point of a military solution is that you can achieve, with rapid, well-organized thrusts, what you cannot do via economic growth. This is how Genghis Khan overran the civilizations on (what we now call) Mongolia's borders, and thousands of miles beyond. In the run-up to WWII, Germany had a big economy, but its economy wasn't bigger than all of its neighbors combined.
Sure, they could cause a major mess, but I doubt that it would extend beyond Eastern Europe, and were they to even do that, a complete isolation of them in regards to oil, banking, commerce, etc, would destroy their stock market and the Russian oligarchs in and outside of Russia would remove Putin fast.
If we had embargoed Iraq instead of launching Desert Shield followed by Desert Storm, Saddam might already have unified the Arab world under his direct rule. He would, at the very least, have conquered Saudi Arabia and all of the Gulf emirates.
As Germany's economic fortunes crumbled under the pressures of total war fought against it on all sides, Hitler's position remained impregnable, and the war was fought to the bitter end until Berlin was completely overrun. In terms of ruling philosophies, a key difference between Putin and Hitler is that unlike Hitler, Putin already runs a vast multinational empire and understands that sectarianism (i.e. Hitler's exterminationist agenda vis-a-vis non-Aryans in the vast areas conquered by Germany) and empire don't go together.