Your take on this seems quite skewed to me - my take is the West has been provocative and so far Putin has been up to the challenge of mostly mitigating Russia's losses (I guess you call that playing the long game if the long game is waiting for America to self-destruct) - Russia hasn't ringed us with up-graded anti-missile bases, color revolutions, put military bases in Canada and Mexico, knocked off our client states one after another, If Russia was acting like us they'd foment unrest in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other Middle-east authoritarian regimes, supply anti-air weapons to the Taliban, offer Pakistan billions of dollars in oil and gas to kick out the American Military- but that is not the case what they have been doing is playing defense (at a high level yes but still defense).