one should also remember they have a piece of doctrine called "escalate to de-escalate" - which also involves a strange framework for the interpretation of statements. This also makes the trolling confusing to the decrypter.

In my view, talking shit and murdering a few hundred civilians is not "threathening a nation", the same way Ukraine is not threatening Russia (as a nation) right now.

Being able to install a puppet government would be a big threat. Economical control (=> like gas) would be a smaller one. Complete military conquest would be the biggest one.

All of the above look now actually less likely than 10 years ago to me (judging with hindsight).

We certainly are.

In my view, "talking shit" about invading additional countries, while actually engaged in a large-scale invasion of a neighboring country (on top of a centuries-long history of actually invading and occupying those countries) cannot be interpreted as anything other than directly threatening those nations.

I'm not saying that they are harmless (being a nuclear power, obviously!), but I strongly believe that they are less of a threat to EU-nations than they were 10 years ago-- they basically played their whole hand in the Ukraine, collected some experience, lost some equipment, threw away and ruined countless lifes, and now, pretty much regardless of what happens in the next years, they are in a weaker position and less of a threat to any european country than 10 years ago.