To be responsible for that damage as a successor, one would have to acknowledge that damage was done in the first place, which isn't something that Russia is willing to do.

And it's not even a government thing. One of the very common historical myths in Russia is that it was a net positive force in basically all the territories it ever occupied as an empire. The rhetoric around it is pretty much identical by the one used by European colonial empires pre-decolonization, except that Russia never underwent the latter (for good reasons: if it were to decolonize in proper sense, it would cease to exist as a state).