Why is it so difficult for Ruzzia to understand? They lost. It is very simple. The USSR was as big and as influential as Ruzzia ever got, and it failed - they collapsed completely.
USSR lost, not Russia. It was a strategic mistake of the United States, when they collapsed the USSR in 1991 and won the Cold War, they relaxed and began to rest on their laurels. Apparently they thought that Russia would collapse on its own.
Is it really so difficult for the West to understand? The Union republics did not strengthen the Soviet Union, but rather drew vitality from Russia. Now Russia is much stronger than the USSR in the best years of its power.
So... Ruzzia had nothing to do with the USSR, it was all the rest but Ruzzia that failed? You need to be honest at least to yourself, Ruzzia is not standing to "the West", but to a very limited and insufficient aid to Ukraine.
If the collapse of the USSR was a "mistake by the US" and not a mistake by the KGB guys that rule you how come half of it is being economically and socially successful in the EU and the NATO? You do not have a selling point, that is why you sent the tanks instead of the diplomats.
The mistake of the United States was not the collapse of the USSR, but the fact that after that they immediately relaxed and began to celebrate the victory and did not take advantage of the opportunity to immediately break Russia into several parts at the same time. Apparently they thought that the centrifugal forces in Russia, amid the shock of the collapse of the USSR, were strong enough for Russia to collapse on its own. The favorable moment was missed and now the West can only dream about the collapse of Russia.