I'm sure if America had no issues with killing civilians then they would be 'achieving' as much in Iraq as in Chechnia. Not that Russia has sorted that out really at all, despite brutality on a large scale.

Russia has never really been the threat it claimed to be. It has always been a bluff. Not to say it didn't have loads of nukes and big armies, but they were never as powerful as the Russian gov would have liked everyone to think.

More to the point, Russia's old sphere of influence is now thoroughly under the EU's boot, and any sort of industrial muscle it once had is gone.

There is only so much oil, it runs out.