Bluff and bluster are the only reliable weapons left in the Russian arsenal I guess.
Well, that and 6,000 nuclear warheads. Russia’s conventional military has most definitely been exposed as a paper tiger, and Russia without oil revenue would definitely be a third world afterthought, but the matter of those thousands of nukes overrides those facts.
In fact, the weakness of Russia’s conventional forces actually makes them MORE dangerous, because it makes it more likely that they would resort to some level of use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. I also think many are missing a key observation here: If Russia were to use a couple of tactical nukes if they feel sufficiently pressed, it would likely give them the upper hand from there on out. Very limited use of nukes would make it incredibly difficult for the West to respond, because once that threshold was crossed it would become clear that Russia did not feel inhibited from further use, and therefore increasing pressure on them, or responding in kind, would be likely to cause wider, strategic use of those weapons.
Therefore, I believe that if Russia were to be the first to use nuclear weapons, so long as that initial use was very limited, they would be able to run the table against the rest of the world so long as they didn’t press things so far that other nations felt that their very existence was threatened and they had nothing left to lose. In poker terms, the West would be faced with having to go all-in at every turn to avoid having to fold their $10 ante, and in the process Russia would take a ton of their chips one bite at a time.