Let me share some of my thinking.

The Russians have a set of goals and a set of constraints. Their main goal is to establish themselves as a free and independent major global player whose security is not compromised by the constant attempts of America to put advanced weapons systems at their borders and finance indoctrination of neighbouring countries’ populace with anti-Russian fascist ideologies. They also want to create the kind of world where all countries participate in mutually beneficial transactions based on international law that is strictly obeyed and enforced. Basically, they wanted to be a free country with good relations with other free countries.

Their main constraint is not having a nuclear war in the process of achieving their goals.

Russian main goal could be realistically possible only if, by some miracle, devil or blue sea swallowed America whole and without a trace. Barring that, America is going to work hard on achieving their goal of total global full-spectrum dominance, where all other countries are reduced to American vassals. While America is in a position of power, controlling finances, military, media and political class of subservient states, and everybody thinks America is militarily invincible and financially omnipotent, America will be able to start more fires than Russia will be able to put out, and it will be able to continue this process until all of its subservient countries have expended their financial, human and military assets fighting Russia, and in the end Russia will be left weakened and still having to fight America with nuclear weapons.

The irony is that the Russian attempt to spare the innocent peoples of Europe creates the strategic framework in which those countries will be completely destroyed first, and their main strategic enemy will be left unharmed and in a position of greatest strength before the final conflict. Russia is playing for the scenario where Europe gradually rebels against the American agenda, but I can’t see that happening; those countries are all in debt, and their debt is controlled by America, who owns the “risk assessment” agencies, who can trivially bankrupt any such country by simply increasing their risk level. Also, America controls fiat currency, and all the political elites and media establishment are American-owned. Everywhere in the American-controlled world, people are in debt, overworked and deeply disenfranchised. Most of them would rather inject themselves with American bioweapons than realise what’s going on.

Russia is trying to play the game of very slow escalation, giving their opponents time to think and change course, and this graduality is, ironically, increasing the probability of everything being swallowed by the pit of chaos. The option that actually has the greatest probability of a good global outcome is a sudden large scale Russian nuclear attack on America and Britain. Barring that, a gradual increase in strength and intensity of blows between parties will slowly grind everything to a Mariupol-like rubble before the inevitable end.

So, Russia is barking at the wrong tree, trying to grind Ukraine and the European armies present there, into a bloody pulp. It’s like trying to stop a car by hitting the brakes, while another person is pressing the trottle. Without America, nothing else would be a problem, because they are the evil and rotten brain behind all the evils we are seeing in the world; with America, you can grind everything else into dust and still be left with the inevitable task of defeating America. Therefore, it’s better to just strike at the heart of the problem immediately and be done with it, while you are still at your peak, rather than wait until you are degraded to the point where the enemy might actually defeat you. The problem is that Putin very strongly doesn’t want to be the person who started the nuclear war, which is the reason why the war might not just become inevitable, but also more likely to be lost.