Disclaimer, I'm an armchair international relations guy
Access to warm water ports has been a major driver in Russian foreign policy for centuries. Today they have access through Sevestapol and Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and Mediterranean port access to Tartus in Syria. In the east the major port is Vladivostok which is kept open with ice breakers.
The security and economic consequences of lack of ports is a big problem. One of the major reasons they annexed Crimea was to guarantee access to the port without requiring a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv, but Sevestapol is now on the edge of a warzone with Ukrainian military just dozens of miles away and the administration not backing away from reclaiming their 2014 borders. Access to the Mediterranean requires bypassing Ukrainian security forces and the Bosporus controlled by Turkey, which is not allowing Russian ships through as a result of the war. To get goods or materiel through to Tartus they need to ship by rail through Georgia, Turkey, and northern Syria - again, major security problems.
So the only major port for Russia is Vladivostok which is across Siberia and ices over in the winter. That makes using it as a major shipping and naval hub prohibitive.
These issues have been around since Peter the Great expanded Russia into a global power, and even the Soviets struggled with naval power projection. Russia even more so today, and they're making their lives worse by invading Ukraine.