I’ve been sort of amazed by the line of reasoning as well: Russia can invade a democracy aligning with “the west”, but if “the west” were to, say, bomb the military in a country that is aligning with Russia (after ignoring election results and suppressing the opposition with violence), then we would be inviting nuclear war. Very asymmetric, but I guess that is the advantage of being an autocrat with a propensity for throwing threats around :/