Empires are generally more about having puppet states - subsidiaries - then "allies" that they're on equal footing with. It's tempting to think of things in terms of countries being allies, since that's how we're used to thinking of the organization of the world, but economically - i.e., in terms of the bulk of how power is exercised - those boundaries are more like minor obstacles than defining features. I say "U.S. empire", the U.S. is the seat, but states like the UK, Germany, and so on ad infinitum, are just under the same command structure. One "country", the government and related machinery, undermining another, that looks more like a power struggle inside a corporation.

I'd also point out that Russia doesn't have this kind of influence compared to the West. At all. The U.S. has over ten times the GDP of Russia. You factor in the other OECD countries, we're talking 20-30 times as much. That's one economic bloc. You throw in the other BRIC countries on the other side, it starts looking a little more balanced, but still not even close.