They never stopped being an empire. They just stopped being and feeling treated like one. This lies at the very center of Putin’s frustration with the US and th

They never stopped being an empire. They just stopped being and feeling treated like one. This lies at the very center of Putin’s frustration with the US and this has been thoroughly documented and reported on. That being said, “They” are not trying to “be” USSR again. That would be missing the entire story behind how the Union was dissolved and the (contrived?) ideology that held it together before that. The USSR was a completely different animal. “They” just want influence and domination in a sort of neo-medieval mobster-capitalist sort of way. That’s all they have known since the 1980’s and that’s how they think the world really works. When they see nearby countries opting into the Western system, they think it is a conspiracy that must be countered. They have a very hard time understanding that much like the USSR, the US is oriented around actually pursuing the tenets of the ideology it is founded on.