Empire nostalgic Russia is like an amputee that still feels leg pain. The pain comes from the enormous gap between Russian great power aspirations and the geographic, demographic, economic and institutional constraints that make such aspirations futile and unrealizable. Smarter guys than I, like Stephen Kotkin and Peter Zeihan, have highlighted the historical and geopolitical roots of these constraints. Some empires die peacefully as they shrink to their original core ethnic territory. I don’t foresee Russia being one of them. But proliferating nationalism determines that shrink to its original core it will.