You have obviously failed to notice that we are already in an increasingly hot war with the Russian govt (which is in reality a transnational criminal syndicate masquerading as a govt).

Any attempt to avoid conflict under the guise of avoiding current hot war actions is merely understood by these actors as weaknesses and permission to take more territories, libreties, and/or criminal actions. This will eventually lead to conflict, and the longer the delay, the larger and mor damaging the eventual conflict.

If you want to avoid large war(or even "WW3"), the solution is to take serious diplomatic, financial, and kinetic (all 3) actions immediately, si that the perceived costs immediately escalate beyond any possible benefits to Vlad and his ilk.

If you want more information, read people who have a deep understanding of the situation and have skin in the game, such as Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion & Russian presidential candidate currently in exile, and Bill Browder, former Russian investment fund founder & progenitor of the Magnitski sanctions being effectively deployed around the world. Both have been there, done that, and buried their friends for their efforts.

Peace is a wonderful goal, but not at the expense of allowing autocrats & criminals free reign - they will stop at nothing and eventually take everything.

Why is it in Russia's interest to stop them? These groups have an arrangement that as long as they don't attack Russia's allies they are untouchable. They bring in money and build up real-world skills that Russia is eager to have. Its like the old-fashioned pirates, as long as there is plausible deniability and they only harm the competition they are a great asset.

So yes Russia might be blamed as they consciously choose to let these guys do their thing. China and NK do the same, as do US, UK and Israel with similar stuff on the other side, done by NSA, CiA, etc

If you think that's in the Russian government's interest you haven't been looking at what they're up to too closely.

Russia isn't really that big a player globally (GDP quite a bit less than Italy's for example), but they've realised they can wield a substantial amount more power by just chaotically screwing things up for their opponents.

It's the same pattern in their cyber attacks, election interference, middle east policy, online disinformation spreading, etc etc. None of it's directly for their own benefit, it's purely to harm opponents.

>GDP quite a bit less than Italy's for example

Nominal. Closer to Germany if we are talking PPP and notably higher than Italy of course