Doublemint, do you feel that Russia is attempting to build another Soviet Union?
There is no Soviet Union (it's a good thing it is gone). There can never be one because the foundation of Soviet Union is atheism.
At this time Russia is the most religiously conservative country in a geo-political context.
What Russia is trying to do is to establish a union with other countries that is economically based.
It is something like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Spain) economic union.
BRICS would have their own Central Bank.
(At this time every country except N.Korea has own individual central bank. Now they would have a "Central" central bank. Since the 70' economic approach of countries changed dramatically, but that's another topic)
After the Berlin Wall went down we agreed with Russia (Gorbachev) that NATO would not expand it's borders.
Instead NATO began expanding it's borders even though USSR is no more.
Gorbachev in a way betrayed his own country and Yeltsin gave away it's resources and gave way to Jewish Oligarchs (a branch of world economic 'mafia').
Meanwhile after the collapse of the USSR old people were starving in Russia. Very sad picture.
And now we incited (or 'brokered', as Obama said) the illegal revolution in Ukraine and made the NATO (against their will) to impose sanctions on Russia. NATO never wanted to impose sanctions. They loved trading with Russia.
Russia in turn imposed own sanctions on Europe and they are suffering at this time a heck of a lot more than Russia is.
(Our trade with Russia is 40 billion dollars/yr, so we don't care that much; Europe's trade with Russia is 400 billion dollars).
When USSR collapsed we became the only super-power in the world.
So we had an unusual amount of wars and military conflicts. Under Clinton alone we had 7 major conflicts including bombing a European capital Belgrade for 30 days straight. We went war crazy.
And war is great business.
You destroy a country then give them a loan to rebuild it and they pay you interest forever.
Once we own your economy we own your politics.
Germany was paying their WWII loans for many years! Amazingly they paid everything up. That is why I kind of expect Germany to start moving away from us and re-establishing the economic ties with Russia. They no longer "owe" us.
OK, so now we do not want Russia or China to become strong because then we would not have the freedom to run the world as freely as we are.
These are the economic wars. And these are the dirtiest wars imaginable. Lies upon lies. Propaganda. No honor.
This means we are losing and playing dirty.
The reason many countries turn to Putin because he still uses old economic style - your word is your bond. A handshake.
Even Clinton said in an interview that Putin never went back on his word.
And this is immensely important.
... let me stop, I talk too much.