I'm in a bad mood.

That's in addition to what it's like to live in my horror movie of a life every day.  I am in a particularly bad mood today.  It is cold and raining in Boston.  The aches and pains of aging seem to be creeping up on me more all the time.  It is tedious and depressing to be as poor as I am.

All of that being said, I have some amateur foreign policy questions.

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I have said before that the Russian government's propensity toward trying to take over territory seems counterproductive to me.  They don't even do it smart and evil like China, which lends money to countries that can't pay it back, who develop things like ports and bridges which China then takes possession of when the borrowers default on their loans.

No, Russia bulldozes through, using the least sophisticated way to get what it wants, making its ostensibly democratic business partners lemon-faced.

I don't really know how to consider what Russia's objective for these decisions is.  Setting aside the moral concerns, which are substantial, it doesn't seem cost-effective to me.  In this day and age, when technology makes it possible for everywhere in the world to be connected with everywhere else in the world, thereby giving even the smallest countries the potential to be part of an international economy, why would anyone expend effort, time, money and people to accrue physical territory?

The most expensive way to interact with other people is to try to make them do what you want, to always try to have power over them.  The least expensive way is to be fair to them, to respect them, and to try not to do things that provoke their resentment and/or undermine or eradicate their independence.