I was imagining that the sphere of influence stuff wouldn't be acknowledged directly and there would be some official agreement for both countries not to interfere in the internal politics of post-Soviet states. But geopolitics being what it is, I doubt that the Russian side would totally restrain itself from interfering in its neighbors' internal politics, so in practice there would be some sort of "sphere of influence", although not quite as blatant as during the Cold War. I agree that it's the US-funded organizations that fund and organize mass protests aiming to cause color revolutions which would lose official support, not everything having to do with liberal democracy. Basically I want to eliminate any US involvement in regime change operations.
As for conflicts, of course there would still need to be active negotiations to deal with the situation. The idea is basically that Russia is not allowed to support the DPR and LPR in seizing additional territory, should the ceasefire agreement break down entirely. I imagine that Putin is too invested in this conflict to permit the Ukrainians from winning that war entirely, either, so realistically there would still be Russian support if Ukraine started winning following a breakdown of the ceasefire agreement. Ideally the conflict will resolve with some sort of compromise granting autonomy to those regions, but at this point it looks like they're just turning into a pair of unrecognized frozen conflict states, like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria.
