Grand Duchy of Finland-like Russian Balkans?

Assuming the Russians had taken an earlier, successful shot at capturing Istanbul/Constantinople, could they have carved GDoF-like autonomous duchies/principalities out of the Balkans (Serbia, Greece, Wallachia, Moldavia e.t.c...) in order to establish a hinterland west of Tsargrad? And how would other European powers of the late 1700's-early 1800s react to such a move?
 
Pan-Slavism could work in Bulgaria

It won't work in the Principalities as Romanian has Latin roots, and/or they were largely Greek-run (phanariot)

But that might not stop Russia making them protectorates akin to Khiva and Bokhara, under their own princes but by and large part of the Russian Empire
 
The question is, what are all the other great powers doing, and why haven't they yet banded together to stop Russia? I mean, they attempted to do so IRL for much less than capturing Constantinople and effectively establishing a sphere of influence that rivals the Warsaw Pact. If the Europeans have all banded together and lost, then Russia is the European hegemon and can do anything it wants, including the plan you outlined in the original post.
 
Pan-Slavism could work in Bulgaria

It won't work in the Principalities as Romanian has Latin roots, and/or they were largely Greek-run (phanariot)

But that might not stop Russia making them protectorates akin to Khiva and Bokhara, under their own princes but by and large part of the Russian Empire

Well, the Church language was Slavonic (and Romanian itself was written in Cyrillic until the 1860s), so I imagine that would be the obvious method of exerting influence, through the Romanian Church. Ironically this would ease some of the tensions compared to what Russia provoked OTL in Poland, for example.
 
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A tapestry of autonomous duchies would be a very likely outcome. Although, most of these duchies would presumably have their own rulers (dynastic or elected/appointed). And one or two of them may be gradually annexed into the Russian Empire, like the micro-monarchies of the Caucasus were in OTL. Especially thinking of Moldavia.

The period between ~1789 and ~1815 was arguably the time for Russia to pull something like that off. Europe was in a state of massive upheaval and very busy with its own problems. And the Ottoman Empire wasn't exactly at peak stability and power, either.
 
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