Putin is neither a reason nor crux of this escalation, he's merely an indicator of deeper historical dynamics. Waves and cycles in global history rise and fall, the next Kondratiev surge looks incoming, as prophesied since the times of the Great Recession.

Russia can exist as a synergistic entity only under the imperial aegis, which is not good or bad per se, but simply most logical from the PoV of its historical evolution, marked with oscillations between cosmopolitical and autarkic attractors. However, I wouldn’t call autarkic mode in any way preferable to me, even had I not left Russia in my teens. It just means that if you want to explain Neosoviet edition of the Russia Eterna under Putin in such Manichean terms, you’ve come to the wrong place.