> Invading your neighbours is ok, if you'll just call it 'good relations'?
It is irrelevant. Sane people should recognize that if Russia decides that any of its smaller neighbors are dangerous to Russia from Russia's point of view, Russia will smash those neighbors and absolutely no one is going to risk a fight with Russia to defend such neighbors. You may not like it. I may not like it. Anti-Russian faction of the US may not like but that is the world that we live in. Until this world changes ( and with time it will ) Russia's neighbors are better not do bidding of others who seek to "advance democracy" or do whatever the hell else they want to do which would antagonize Russia. It just won't end up well for those neighbors.
This already happened once. The year was 2008 and a not very much in touch with a real world, educated in the West, Georgia's President bought hook, line and sinker into senile assurances of McCain and other members of the "Democracy for the World!" cabal. Saakashvilli decided to smash what Russia considers its enclave in Georgia (that had a de-facto autonomy inside Georgia, had a very large Russian majority but none the less had as much effect on Georgia's government as a village of 200 in West Virginia that claims to be special an independent from Washington, DC has on those going to Jean George in NYC) during the opening days of the 2008 Olympic Games in China. Putin was at those games. The calculation was rather simple it seems - there was no way Russia would respond militarily. That would be a total PR disaster, right? Well, there's this famous Russian proverb "Гладко было на бумаге, да забыли про овраги" which loosely equivalent to "No plan survives reality". Russia refused to play by the PR war rules. Instead of letting Georgia have those enclaves, Putin sent Russian paratroopers to deal with a Georgian army. So instead of the opposite side being a loose band of self-defense forces, it was Russian rapid deployment detachments. Georgian attack was repelled, their supply lines were cut, forces inside the enclaves were smashed and by the day number three the regular Russian army was deployed to use an overwhelming force against Georgia. Saakashvilli went to ask for help from the US, which he absolutely expected to get, especially since Russians started exterminating his troops. McCain and other clowns mumbled something on TV but at the end calculation was simple - US was not going to go to war with Russia over Georgia.
The same happened with Ukraine. Russia has strategic interests and billions of dollars invested in the Crimea and its ports. One needed to be really naive not to realize how Russia would respond to an attempt to squeeze it out of Crimea. That should have been especially obvious in after seeing Russia's response to Georgia in 2008. Unfortunately, the smartest people in the room did not learn from Saakashvilli's mistakes, so Russia took Crimea. The US did not go to war with Russia over it because it is not the war the US could possibly win. At most it could have delivered some significant damage to Russia. That damage, however, would have paled compared to the damage Russia would have delivered to the NATO counties in Europe. So no one was going to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. No one would go to war with Russia over any other former Soviet Republics.
Luckily, contrary to the scare mongering peddled by some rather insane people, Russia does not really have any interest in starting war with those who don't threaten it.
Give it another 30 peaceful years and Russia would change, just like entire Eastern Europe would. Over a long term, Starbucks and Spotify are must more effective weapons than Apache helicopters, especially since those helicopters need to be shipped from the United States.