I agree, but that’s not exactly what Prigozhin and Kadyrov are after.
They want what China has - but Prigozhin in particular thinks the way Russia should’ve got it is by holding the USSR together and then exporting stuff Russia doesn’t even make, to the rest of the world.
The problem with abolishing the cold war mentality is, it doesn’t exactly address what to do with a country that on one hand has Prigozhin and his bedfellows lusting after a new October Revolution to restore state ownership with bells on, and the Duginists on the other hand who are pursuing revanchist ethnofascism.
It’s a toxic combination where the only thing both sides really have in common is, they both want to reconquer the Warsaw Pact region - one wants to get there militarily and is happy to use nukes if that’s what it takes, the other wants to do it by promoting “Russkyi Mir” (but has a massive butt-hurt because much of eastern Europe looked at “Russkyi Mir” and said NO THANKS, you literally have nothing to offer except books we read decades ago, music from decades ago, oil and gas which we can get from elsewhere...)
Both sides feel a hugely hyperinflated sense of victimhood, and annoyingly both sides do have a point. The West has belittled Russia. Russia HAS been hollowed out by its own kleptocracy.
Pounding Ukraine into dust over it while trying to blackmail Europe, though, is completely the wrong response. If Russia had decided to get its own house in order and THEN tried to export its values to its neighbors through the exercise of soft power, it might have had far more luck.