The whole Cold War was about the Soviets/Russians being able to just completely change your precious country into radioactive glass with people living in the Stone Age. Ok, glass age.
“Take over” is. It the point. “Eliminate rivals” is the point. And I can ensure you the Russians have threatened, have tried and and will again. The US, believe it or not, is not a hermetically sealed block. It depends on external inputs and very definitely depends on other countries to buy your exports. And the Russians are most assuredly threaten your customers. They threatened to nuke the Chinese outright in the late 60s.
And then there is the election interference and Russian money in politics. The Russian mob bailed Trump out after he bankrupted a casino. Twice. Buying politicians is not the same as boots in the ground, no. But it most assuredly comes asymptotically close to “take over”
They also distract your attention and resources. The whole mess in the Middle East was made much much worse when the Soviets invaded Irans weak neighbor, Afghanistan, in 1979. The plan was to exploit the Iranian revolution and move their forces closer to the oil fields. Before that the US was not all that interested in the Persian Gulf. After that they had the entire 5th fleet based there. That war ultimately ended in 9/11 because the US was sort of forced to give money to the Jihadis to fight the Russians.
