They may have had the potential to be a superpower, but it’s apparent that they never had the leadership to conduct as one. Those inside the Kremlin bought into their own bullshit and thought of themselves as a superpower, not realising the machine within is operating on unlubricated, old, broken, and missing parts.

This seems to be a common theme with countries that feed a superiority narrative to their people and other nations.

Oh, they were a superpower as the USSR. Propping up friendly governments, supplying coups, ratfucking around where more blatant impositions wouldn’t be tolerated. It was just built on a house of cards and when it imploded it imploded big.

The USSR always had serious issues. They just buried it and heavily restricted civil liberties.