[guard-of-terra]

"Russia is also really big and has all the resources it needs to recover from anything"

Sure, but industries will be destroyed and people die, starve and be forcibly relocated. That's what happened to ex-USSR a lot because the rest of world did not see any reason to rebuild a country that in fact yielded to them.

You are free to "don't understand", but the damage I mentioned was done. Don't then be surprised when people you considered harmless want to nuke you for all the good. All the good that, strictly speaking, you did not have to do.

"Second of all, if they lost the cold war, I don't get why they'd want another one"

If Germans lost one world war, why would they want another one?