russia had the right to do whatever it wanted to recover its empire

I don’t see anyone seriously making these arguments. What I do see is a nasty situation in Eastern Europe thanks to decades of privatization and looting of the domestic economies. There’s a reflexive anti-Americanism that suggests simply divorcing from the western economy will restore the eastern states to a more normal economic path. But Putin isn’t exactly Lenin (or even Khrushchev), so there’s no reason to believe a Russian capitalist oligarch looting the Bulgarian or Estonian economy would somehow benefit anymore more than the UK/US doing it.