Military defeat, not humiliation takes down the empire. Humiliation is the necessary byproduct to get the empire's population disinterested in the psychic wages of empire--fantasies of greatness, racial and/or civilizational superiority.

Deimperializing Russia will surround it with free non-western buffer states: Karelia, a post-Lukashenko Belarus, a free Dagestan, Chechnya, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Uralia and many other nations most of us never heard of. The kleptocratic commodity export deals that fueled five centuries of Russian subjugation of these peoples will be renegotiated with a downsized Russia. Cold turkey withdrawal through total defeat, like Germany and Japan in 1945 , Italy in 1943 and the Confederacy in 1865, is the only way out of empire-aholism. Rise and strike again happens with incomplete defeat, as in Germany in 1918. Do the job halfway and you have to do it twice.