Alright, ive noticed lately a lot of timelines, heck a majority even, have a Russia that is at least a Eurasian power, if not a global one. So i was wondering, with any POD you wish, how do you keep Russia from becoming so important, or, even existing? And, what nation(s) take its place?
Well, I guess having another giant East-Slavic Eurasian or global power in place of Russia does not qualify.
I mean 'Russia' in this context is any polity where majority of population is Eastern Slavs.
So you may conquer the East Slavs by any other polity - Lithuanians, Swedes, Khazars, Hungarians or anyone else. But it is almost impossible to remove the Slavs from this territory.
So the only way to keep Russia from becoming big and important is to keep the Russians disunited. A lot of Russian principalities squabbling among themselves will do.
As a matter of fact Rus was that way before before the Mongol conquest.
It was never too much united in best days in 10th and 11th centuries. And in the 12-th century any hope of real unity was lost for good.
In the 12th century Rus was not a serious threat to its' neighbors and the processes of further disintegration were developing.
What you need is a POD to avoid Mongol yoke, get rid of Mongol invasion and conquest - keep the Mongols inside Asia - for example Temutchin died early and the Mongols started fratricidal war of succession, or Chengiz Khan was never born at all or something like that.
The natural development of Rus without Mongol invasion will be -
a lot of 'Russian' states competing with each, fighting each other, making alliances with foreign powers like Lithuania, Poland, Hungury or Kipchaks against each other. Even before Mongol invasion there were a few Grand Princes, in some time there will be more of them.
The 'Russians' before Mongols did not have a tradition of stable and strong central power.
The Russia that the world knows and fears is 'Moscovite state' as a successor of the Mongol 'Golden Horde'.
I mean it was the Mongols who created the "Terrible Russia" with all-powerful ruler, the centralistic aggressive state modeled after the Mongol Khanate.
You know that it was the Mongols who installed the Grand Prince of Rus over the Mongol Russia with powers to extract tribute and exercise authority over all Russian lands controlled by the Horde. So the Mongols created the unity of the Russians, they united Russia and when the Golden Horde disintegrated the Russians used their unity against the Mongols.
So, without Mongol invasion there will be a lot of "Russias" who will spend most of their aggressive energy fighting each other. Best case scenario is have all these Russias united for a short period of time under some charismatic leader - equivalent of Holy Roman Empire in the time of its decay when HRE emperors did not have any real power.
By the 15th century all these Russian states will forget that they had some sort of unity long time ago. They will be different states like France to England or Portugal.