> Huge population!? Not even twice bigger than Germany
Germany also has a huge population, especially by European standards, even if somewhat less huge than Russia’s. Both Germany and Russia are outliers, being in some ways far from the European average. What makes Russia much more distinctive, is in how many different ways it is an outlier - arguably in a fair few more ways than contemporary Germany is, which makes it a much bigger outlier overall.
> They have nuclear weapons for sure, but I wouldn’t like to speculate about their maintenance and availability.
For a decent-sized nation state, nuclear weapons aren’t actually that hard to manufacture and maintain and deliver, especially if they aim at basic functionality and aren’t trying to be on the cutting edge. The biggest obstacles for most such countries are (1) the rest of the world will try to stop them through sanctions, clandestine operations, even military action; (2) if you don’t have domestic uranium deposits, it is very hard to buy uranium for military use, all major sellers will insist you promise to use it for civilian purposes only and submit to regular inspections to prove that. As an accepted nuclear weapons state, Russia doesn’t have to worry about (1); Russia also has substantial uranium reserves and is one of the world’s leading uranium exporters, so it doesn’t have to worry about (2) either. So I think Russia’s nuclear arsenal is likely to be reliable and usable.