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Tremendous wasted potential. You could be living the kind of life Norwegians are enjoying, but you are unable to climb out of the self-destructive pattern that leads to low development, lack of freedoms, retarded economy and general despair that makes 1 in 4 men to drink themselves to death before the age of 55. As much as you like to shake fists at the "rotting West", in the end it's you who are living shorter, unhappier and less productive lives. It's true now, it was true in Soviet days, and it was true during czars and empresses.
The rest of us would happily leave you alone in that misery if only you stopped trying to drag us down with you.
It works the same was in the US. Your taxes pay for the CIA, the CIA overthrows governments for United Fruit, and you buy products from United Fruit. You're paying for bananas twice and they are receiving "security" (wink, wink) for free[1]. Later, CIA high-ups get high-paid sinecures at the United Fruit company, making them the only ones getting compensated for the deployment of the government's resources. Russian citizens are not going to get parcels of land from occupied Ukraine. The soldiers who survive the war aren't going to get mineral rights. Instead of asking, "what are the downsides," a more pertinent question is, "who's getting the upsides?" (It is never you or me.) In practice, at least since the British Empire, wars of imperial expansion have served as another method of transferring resources from the public to a few influential business owners - corruption in so many words, not any different from stealing the funds for a highway.
In the middle ages and earlier, soldiers would be rewarded in the form of titles of nobility, or in the Roman Empire, with land and prisoners of war to use as slaves. If that was a practice anywhere in the world today, perhaps I'd comprehend the argument for war from the pursuit of economic interests. Then, at least, it would be a moral issue - otherwise, as it is today, it's another pretext for the few to steal from the many. That means you.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
So when I see "Russian imperialism" being thrown around as a casual insult I stop being constructive in response. This is not the right way to discuss histories, and especially you shouldn't try to frame any ethnic and religious group for their history in serious faith.
I see a lot of political zealots doing that kind of slander, not really understanding what they are doing and why.
Still, if there are any possibilities to "cash out" the paltry benefits of history they went through, Russians will not hesitate to. After all, as you have rightfully noticed, common folk of both Russian and British empires have already paid for it in their sweat and blood.
That's why there should be a better proposition than "badmouth your backwards Russian history and embrace our Pax Americana", especially as we were never cast for any decent roles in the latter. I can see it is good enough for Czechs but we'd pass.
Of course I realize there's a sufficient number of Russians, especially abroad, who have radically different views. Not that it matters much, because as another such Russian's protagonist said, "in this world there's too few people whose desires have any meaning whatsoever"
Russians also been through the 90's where we were told pikemen should cater to the highest bidder. Since the beginning of the hot war, however, the state has suddenly found itself in need of their population which it has disregarded before.
I imagine the same may happen in EU where these underemployed young males are suddenly treated with good wages if they decide to join the armed forces.
On the other hand, fleeing Russian opposition takes pride in reiterating how they are going to sack all of these pikemen the second they are made a puppet government. That's why their influence is basically nonexistent. Navalny was smarter than that, but the team he gathered is just like that.
Prior to 2014 I don't remember any serious prospects of EU-Russia integration. EU did not even bother to have visa waiver for Russian citizens. Russians also didn't have any special education opportunities coming from EU. Basically Russians could only visit EU on short term visas as tourists to spend their money there. And a tourist can always switch to a different destination.
You don't need visa or border checks to visit Crimea anymore, though. Pandemics do not shut off its borders.
This sounds a bit sad, doesn't it? Do you really believe it? Because this way of saying is typical of autocrats looking for an external enemy in order to cement their own power.
The reality is that Europe had enough of wars and we made an effort to integrate and collaborate peacefully. It's not always easy but it's working better than ever. And we did collaborate with Russia as much as we could - but there was no political will on the other side to extend it.
Personally I have many Russian friends, they are normal people and want to live happily. There is no reason why one country should invade another because the result is always suffering.
There was a meaningful framework of participation for Poland, for Bosnia, even for Turkey, but none for Russia.
So in 2014, Europe and the US didn't have any levers that it could pull. You couldn't meaningfully distance from Russia because we were never any close.
But this is at the level of politics and personal ambition of the former KGB agent. At the level of individuals, the above is total bullshit. Most Russians I meet are really, really nice people. And I'm not even talking about engineers but common people. The only thing I didn't like is the culture of drinking and being a little too pushy in this regard.
EU didn't want to integrate with existing RF for a long list of reasons. "As much as we could" turned out tiny. And there was no political will on the EU side to expand it despite whatever Putin was doing prior 2014 or even 2011.
So in the absense of these integrations designed to prevent wars and strife, we've got strife and wars, like how you get fender benders when driving on icy roads with summer tyres. The friction was insufficient and the thing lost control.
I can see the prevailing attitude that integration with Russia was a "nice to have" thing which could be forfeited at any moment when Russia was deemed unworthy. But winter tyres are the must as temperatures drop below zero.
I see this rhetoric very often. "He had to", "obviously he had no other choice". These are all false premises. He could not kill his own journalists but he chose to, for his own advantage. He could choose cooperation instead of war, but he wanted to be remembered in history books as the guy who brought not only Belarus but also Ukraine to his empire. Well, he will be remembered, but not exactly the way he hoped to.