Is Russia Engaging in an Exercise in Empire Building?

There's two principal narratives, and from my perspective, it seems that both of them have some truth. But people seem to want to collapse their sense making into one or the other. I think that it's very straightforward that russia is engaging in an exercise in empire building. However, what's not discussed is that imperialism itself has powerful economic and security drivers whenever it's undertaken. Both nato and russia are engaged in imperialist expansion driven by irresolvable, at least mutually irresoluble, legitimate security concerns. And i think that's the tragedy of the human condition.