Russia is a weird entity, man. It is primarily one enormous city, a billion acres of fuckall, and a small handful of backwater industrial wastelands with life expectancies of 55 years. And corrupt from bottom to top. It's a wonder it works at all... it is a house of cards that everyone knows is a house of cards, and a couple Afghan goatherds with single-shot rifles were able to hold off the USSR for the better part of 20 years. It doesn't make sense, in many ways.

BUT.

Now that the US is out of international politics for good, all those hands are going to reach out to someone else for the money we used to send them to prop up their untenable regimes. Hence every 'bad guy' in the middle east rushing in to shake Putin's hand... in the hope that cash and weapons flow forth promptly.

Because China is dangerous to partner with. The sheer scale of what the Chinese can bring to bear - in money, manpower, technology, or weaponry - is hard to fathom. You also know that China holds grudges, and will destroy things just for the sheer theater or psychological impact of it.

So if you are a petty dictator and looking for a Big Brother or enabler, Russia is your one place left to go.

Which could result in sapping the Russian economy (even further) if Putin supports every old US ally out of hubris, or, it could result in these failed states/insurrections in becoming even more piratical, once let loose from the chains that have bound them.

Once set afloat without any support from major funding, what's a Somali pirate to do...?

So I could see things going either way... Russia steps in and becomes the sugar daddy to (even more) shitheads, or those shitheads have to go it their own and throw themselves entirely into the totalitarian regime model that will be their ultimate downfall in 3-7 years.

It is a weird time to be alive, man.

I almost prefer the time when the Russkies nuking us was the primary concern...