One may argue it has already done so in the past via election interference, except now it also has AI in its arsenal, which won’t even need ICBMs to be delivered to its targets.
Second of all, the "much smaller neighbour" is any European country to them. Ukraine is the biggest country on European continent if we include the occupied territory. And it's actually has the most capable armed forces military-wise. Russia took over 116k sq km of Ukraine. All three Baltic states are 175k sq km combined and they literally can't defend themselves in case USA decides to withdraw.
And last but not the least, Russia's war is irrational. It makes no sense from any rational viewpoint. So relying on common sense in this case is wrong. You need to understand russian ideology and Putin's specifically.
But to prebut whataboutism, I also don’t like American imperialism.
Didnt they start almost immediately trying to setup like mineral processing facillities in areas they were able to nominally gain control of?
Wonder what the impetus for this was, were the elites embezzling too much or low oil prices or something that motivated them to pillage to make up the difference? Or typical greed in the absence of any asscovery...