It is just more of a publicity stunt and intelligence operation. Don't forget that Russia is trying to cause enough destabilization to allow their land acquisition to be successful. They don't care about these previous Soviet block countries. And in fact stated that they are going to withdraw their sovereignty and Independence to reintegrate them into the Soviet block. Yep that's right if it was previously USSR territory, the Soviets have every right to re-annex all of these countries forcefully.
Which again is the stated very clear goal of the Russian government to overthrow the entire world and install a Soviet dictatorship across the planet. For that reason I do believe Russia deserves to be allowed to commit war until it finally exhausts itself. And then we're going to let sanctions bite until the Russian people willingly hand over nuclear weapons and sign the treaty to be demilitarized for the next hundred years if not for the rest of human history.
The greatest killer of human beings last century was communism and specifically in the USSR and China both LED the entire world in human rights abuses as well as murders. Don't forget China also did forced Organ harvesting.