pcr provides opening commentary on putin's speech to the russians, which you aught to read and consider as i see all of the ukraine game as the empire's working to rule the world, and i can back that up historically with ease;

 Putin’s Address to the Russian People, September 21, 2022

http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69390 

A translation is below

Introduction by Paul Craig Roberts

The Western media is a collection of liars in a propaganda ministry, and its so-called “Russian experts” are for the most part Russophobes operating on grants from the US military/security complex.  Consequently, Westerners have no valid understanding of the conflict in Ukraine, how it arose, and how the West’s involvement together with extraordinary provocations, has  created in the Russian leadership the conviction that the goal of the West is to destroy Russia.  As this conviction hardens, the Russian leadership is abandoning hope of peaceful coexistence with the Western world and is preparing for war.

In his speech Putin begins the preparation of the Russian people for the hard reality.  Putin doesn’t like the hard reality and did his best to avoid it by ignoring provocations and insults until it became impossible because, as Putin says,  “the West has crossed every line.”

The West, of course, is Washington.  The rest of the Western world reports to Washington as I learned from a US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. “How,” I asked him, “do we get the other countries to do what we want?”  “Money,” he replied. “You mean foreign aid?”  “No, we give the leaders bagfuls of money.  They report to us.  We own them.”.........more...........