I don't disagree with you. As Wally says Putin is not a stupid man, he plays people like chess pieces with the ruthlessness of a cartel leader. Putin has pretty much denounced the values of democracy and I guess he's concerned abount the highly successful break that Ukraine has made from the old USSR - democracy is thriving and this may worry Putin as it undermines his vision of democracy being inherently weak. As any good narco-leader will know if you sow doubt into a scenario and manipulate the cracks its easier to exploit the weaker parties. After Brexit Europe is weaker and less stable and since NATO is mainly Europe but funded by the US then that is also a structural weakness to be tested. Is NATO going to rally around Ukraine - looks like it at the moment but the Bild Zeitungs article on Germany only sending money to the Ukraine has caused a diplomatice issue, is Germany now exposed?
China, Russia and the US the old dynamic is outdated. The US is weakening fast and its global hegemony vanishes - Trump managed to make the US a laughing stock around the world and did more damage in 4 years than was thought possible. China is moving into a very un-stable economic phase and its economy struggles with un-fathomable amounts of debt and Russia is floundering around under a kleptocracy that's seeing its leadership bleed the country dry with mounting military commitments and a declining economy.
The issue though is that Russia is calling the shots at the moment; as the aggressor they are calling the tune and the rest of the world can only wait. Russia is a world leader in exporting dis-information within the news ans more importantly on social media. Dis-inforamtion, lies, half-truths all festers and grow like a cancer attacking the values of the persons and people it wants to bring down. It distorts context, it changes reality it creates dangerous fantasies that are designed to be passed on to people that read this on their social media. It is very clever and designed to fit into a certain mindset; its designed as clickbait to spread it on other chat sites and social media platforms and blogging and the people its aimed at are legion. There are hindreds of millions of very stupid people in the world that live on social media and cannot differentiate fact from reality or context or nuance. In the intelligence jargon these people are called "useful idiots".............
...........why didn't you start with that post rather than posting all that other drivel earlier; being a "useful idiot" and passing on other "useful idiots" versions of reality.