Opposition to imperialism and colonialism is revolutionary and progressive even when it comes from bourgeois forces because it opens the door to proletarian revolutionary forces. Marxist-Leninist theory is very clear about this:

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm

The primary contradiction in the world today is not between workers and peripheral capitalist states like Russia, it is between hegemonic Western imperialism and those resisting it. It is the struggle against neo-colonial subjugation, super-exploitation and underdevelopment.

The biggest global barrier to proletarian revolutions and national liberation worldwide is US and European imperialism.

Russia is allied with or providing aid to every existing socialist or anti-imperialist state. They are directly arming or otherwise supporting the countries that are most acutely struggling against imperialism and colonialism, from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, to Mali and Burkina Faso, to Iran and the DPRK.

But beyond of all that, Russia simply does not fulfil the criteria of the Leninist definition of imperialism, especially not when taking into account how imperialism has changed over the past hundred years:

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/03/02/is-russia-imperialist/

https://classconscious.org/2025/06/03/is-russia-an-imperialist-power-revisiting-lenin-in-the-21st-century/

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/why-russia-and-china-are-not-imperialist--a-marxist-leninist

https://www.ir-press.ru/2025/08/24/russia-not-an-imperialist-country/

The Russian economy is still more akin to that of a neocolonized global south country than to one of an imperialist country.

Unless your definition of “imperialism” is just “when country does things outside of its own borders”, Russian imperialism ended in 1917.