That's been the story the MSM has been selling since February, 2022. I have heard zero change in that story for the past year and a half. The picture you are describing, however, doesn't fit the political / economic position Russia (Putin's regime) currently occupies or how events have changed during that time.

I am often accused of being a "Putin apologist". Actually, I view Putin the same way I view any politician. He is the mafia boss of the mafia of his country, a.k.a. their government. The place we differ is that I see us looking at two mafias fighting over turf. Ukraine has been "Russian turf" for centuries. Peeling Ukraine away from Russian influence is a radical re-write of global political alignment. And I have zero illusions that the people on the west have any moral standing from which to judge Russia's mafia. The west is equally corrupt as the Russians (they hid their corruption better, though that veil is failing; the magnitude is totally equal); the Ukrainian oligarchs are in a league of their own, with lovely strains of explicit original-strain Naziism running through it.

There are no good guys here. The reason I argue for the Russian position is that it is more stable. Ukraine under Russian influence has been a stable part of the global map for centuries. Ideal? Of course not. Tons of corruption, very ugly.

But the current situation is even worse. We didn't need to stir this hornets nest.