I think it’s more Putin trying to pull the Reagan “Star wars” trick and get the USA to spend a fortune responding to a non-existent threat.
Russia's economy is approximately the same size as S Korea's or Spain's and is much smaller than those of France and the UK and just a fraction of the US's or China's. The country appears to export little but oil, gas and military hardware. For how long can it continue to pour resources into advanced weaponry in an attempt to maintain "superpower" status alongside the US and China? Presumably everything else which advanced Western countries take for granted such as healthcare, education, social care, pensions, infrastructure etc have been neglected. How long will the apparently compliant population tolerate being a third world country in virtually every respect except for the military? Putin and his corrupt mafia cronies would appear to control everything to their own advantage while neglecting pretty much everything else - and eliminate all opposition both literally and through control of the media.
It is not beyond imagining that a repeat of the Reagan Star Wars scenario i.e. a massive ramp up of Western military expenditure which helped force the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s would eventually result in the overthrow of Putin and his henchmen as the population got increasingly fed up with becoming poorer and poorer. The establishment of a regime more focused on domestic issues rather than creating trouble abroad would be in everyone's interest.