The Cicero Foundation has published a new short paper entitled "Shaping Georgia's Future After the Russian Invasion." I have not given the document a careful read yet, but I have pulled the following idea from the conclusion about what Russia can do to repair the deep-seated animosity held toward Moscow by an overwhelming majority of the Georgian population since the war - copy Obama's "over the head" style outreach: "Russia should adopt a new Georgia policy, one that would temper Moscow's passion for "regime change" in Tbilisi and would instead employ a direct outreach to the Georgian people. (As examples of such "over-the-head" approaches, they cite President Barack Obama's video message to Iranians celebrating Nowrus and easing restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba)."
Interesting, but I can't think of any other example of a soft power approach in Russian foreign policy. It's hard to imagine this government going for the warm-and-fuzzy thing.
Oh, so Russia is now alienated from elites constituting a government thinks that massed 122mm multiple rocket launcher fire is the way to deal, not only with an area they have never controlled since the instant they gained independence, but also with Russian soldiers deployed to the area under a UN mandate.
I suspect that the Russian government has learned not to greatly care what such open enemies think of them.
By the way, this is what makes the fulminations of Goble, Piontkovsky and the rest so funny. The RF government seem perfectly prepared for the "reset" to fail, since in that case the West has no leverage on Russia. Russia relies on the West for nothing, and they fear nothing that the West can do to them without hurting the West as badly.
So it's difficult to see how the West is benefitted from listening to their bloviations.
It would be a good change at least for Russia to change strategy, to become a little more subtle and be less threatening. On the other hand, in the way they act at the moment it guarantees that most countries remain wary of them and turn instead to the rest of the hemisphere. If Russia learnt the art of subtlety, they would be a bigger threat to the former satellite countries as they would use their money discretely to influence and interfere abroad. Recently, all they manage to do is to turn moderate countries against them and attract dictatorships.
As cringing as the lack of subtlety is, it's better this way for the independence of the countries of the near abroad