RUSSIA today relies on its fearsomely erstwhile reputation as a decades-long military superpower.
You can't think of Russia as anything else with that superpower status owing its roots to Vladimir Lenin in the early years, Joseph Stalin's post-World War 2 and Leonid Brezhnev, who reinforced Soviet military supremacy.
Under Mikhail Gorbachev's twist of liberalisation, the sprawling Soviet empire disintegrated in December 1991, and the 15 transcontinental republics returned to their original nationhood.
At its apogee, the USSR was a nuclear power and still is under its now Russian construct. This military might has inspired anxiety on its independent frontline neighbours: Western Europe, currently Ukraine and, to a broader extent, the United States, that supplies Ukraine with arms.
Against this backdrop, Russia simply knows no other way to exert its influence. When has the world ever thought of Russia as an economic superpower producing just gadgets, and practical home and business technology?
Which brings us to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now entering its ponderous 17th month. Russia desires to return to a Soviet-styled conglomeration but knows resistance is tough, so it starts small with the Ukrainian annexation.
It may look like a detached, faraway flashpoint, but it's not: Malaysia paid a dreadful price with the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014 during one unwieldy missile hit over eastern Ukraine airspace, with justice still plodding away.
If that's not troubling, Moscow has currently unleashed a naval blockade and bombardment of Ukrainian ports in the strategic Black Sea, compelling a Ukrainian retaliation of targeting the shipping out of Russian and Russian-occupied ports.
The implication can't be starker: grain exports have been grounded and that's bad news for a world highly dependent on the commodity to avert a food crisis. The collapse of the Black Sea grain deal messes up the politico-military equation for everyone directly impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Mostly, it scares the world's poorest countries as they edge ever closer to the brink of a food crisis, especially if grain is their national staple. While the relevant parties thrash out a mega politico-economic deal to quell this latest crisis, grain prices soar, forcing millions into poverty and food insecurity.
Given that Russia and Ukraine are major global grain exporters, soaring grain prices also affects worldwide bread, cereal and pastry prices. That's just bad. Annexation aside, perhaps a compromise can be negotiated: ease of sanctions against Russia in financial movements while the latter cuts down on military assaults as a sign of good faith.
How will this hellish moment ultimately end? The answer lies on whether Russia can be persuaded to release the country's deep desire to go back in time and clamber back quickly towards détente and global peace.
In the meantime, a tightly-winded world remains hostage to this struggle for "historical re-balancing", Russian-style. We all wait in silent agony.