It has been already said in novels, that academic city is seeking something in Russia and i came up with a theory what it can be. But lets first sort out the possible objectives.
Rich material resources - this sounds fine but why would academic city need exactly Russia? There are better suited countries and more peaceful methods to do this.
Nuclear material - by taking this by whathever reasons, they would only enrage the rest of the world. And more important note - How would Aleister use radioactive material for his plan to get rid of magic?
lambskin - this is surely interesting piece of paper, but as for now it looks like its only meant for accelerator. And Aleister have all the knowledge he needs from Aiwass, so why bother with this?
Kremlin report - if i understand it correctly, this will bring victory to Russia, with the cost of many Russian lives. Academic city has no use for this.
Making accelerator stronger - this could be achieved without war.
This whole war was planed by higher ups from Academic City(and i bet Aleister is no exception), meaning there must be something specific that Aleister wants for his plan in Russia.
AIM - an involuntary movement, or as seen by magic side - demonic powers. Also Aiwass was called as DRAGON (reference to satan). So if i put demons + Russia together, i get this :
Kola Superdeep Borehole, you can find information about it on wikipedia or here is documentary video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHbyRkklIhg (russian lang + czech subtitles). for those who dosnt know any of these languages, here is summary : 10km north of city Zapolyarniy in Russia was the deepest drilled hole
in the world (12.262 km), everything was fine until they get to 12 km, after that a accident followed by accident. The foreign scientifists claimed that they dug out something supernatural. When they crossing that depth, the SSSR falled appart. The newspapers said that "Not long before that in the huge depth one could hear sound similar to screechs and screems of hundreths of tortureds. Followed by a massive roar and explosion. From the pit jumped out something terrible, invisible to eye and because of that, even more terrifying." The public feared that down there is hell.
I know you can say that this hell theory sounds like "oh, come on, there cant be something like hell" but well, this goes with every religious theory. It would be interesting if Kazuma Kamachi used this idea in his novels
And if there is a hell in Toaruverse, maybe its filled with AIM and by connecting to it, Aleister could flood world with AIM...