I am not dehumanising Russians, merely their political culture and political traditions. A country can have a lot of decent people and, at the same time, be a hate and death-monger - just see the Nazi Germany. All depends on current leadership and their policies, which in large part depends on country's political culture and history (e.g. Putin wouldn't really fly as a leader of Canada, and Trudeau would get murdered in no time if he somehow became a leader of Russia).

> All gave up their psychotic empire-building games (or at least sublimated into forms not involving large-scale military conflict) long ago.

They did not. They were subjugated by the current empire, the US and are all just fiefdoms nowadays, some of them are even occupied by military forces, called bases.

Russia isn't in that list.