I also forgot Mongolia and Kazakhstan on the list of nations that are neither Russian puppets nor in danger of invasion. And further out, Russia has good relations with India as well (not sure about Pakistan).

To be fair, there were some significant disagreements between Kazakhstan and Russia after Putin made comments about their traditional statehood, prompting several threats from their own authoritarian leader, but when Kazakh leadership felt threatened by protesters, they appealed to Russia for troops to quell the popular revolt.