I think of the “Soviet block” as a Russian colonial empire. Like other such empires it drew ranks from different nationalities, ostensibly was ran for the benefit of all of its members, but really only for the Russians, though in a perverse way.

That way was the realisation (continuation?) of the “Great Russia” project. People may not have civil liberties, may be poor and terrorised, but the outside is terrified too.

Did the Ukrainians, Georgians and Estonians want nuclear standoffs with the US for its own sake? Did they want to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968?

Westerners are usually referring to the Russian leadership. There's a straight line of corruption from the Soviets to Putin.

Also, we're bad at geography, and "former soviet state" is easy / lazy.

Finally, I know lots of Ukrainians that grew up in Russia and vice versa, and can't really keep all the permutations straight. (As I can't for my colleagues from any continent.)

a bit of nitpicking — but the Soviet Union never really had predominantly Russian leadership, which would be disproportionate to the Russian part of the Soviet population. Lenin was from a Russian noble but ethnically diverse family. Stalin was a Georgian and spoke Russian with an incredibly thick accent to the end of his life. Khrushchev and Brezhnev were Ukrainians, and so on.

But I get your point, and now it makes more sense to me.

I see in Putin more of that monarchist strain — chauvinism from the times of Imperial Russia, which indeed was so much focused on that "RRR-Russian" identity, much more "blood and soil" ideology. And add to that Late Soviet state "efficiency".