pcr encapsulates the ukraine game from the ussr to today clearly and makes several good points;

Armageddon Is Closer Than You Think

Paul Craig Roberts

The world is facing catastrophe, and there is no awareness.  For years I and Stephen Cohen, while he was still alive,  advised that Washington’s provocations of Russia, including those of its NATO puppet states, were misguided and counter-productive.  Even prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was open for the Soviet Union to become a cooperating member of the West.  The Russian population had a favorable attitude toward the West and looked forward to Russia’s incorporation into the Western world.

The Reagan administration and Reagan’s successor, the George H. W. Bush administration were open to this idea.  President Bush’s Secretary of State Jim Baker affirmed that he promised there would be no movement of NATO east to Soviet borders if Gorbachev permitted the reunification of Germany, which set the stage for the freedom of the Soviet Union’s Eastern European empire.

The Clinton regime, under the influence of  Neoconservatives, violated America’s word on the grounds that it was verbal and not in writing and therefore did not count.  The Clinton regime not only overthrew Yugoslavia and broke it into pieces while turning a historic part of Serbia over to Muslims, but also moved NATO to Russia’s border.  At the time with the Soviet collapse in 1991 Russia was too weak to do anything about it as the Yeltsin government was Washington’s puppet.

At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin, Yeltsin’s successor, declared that Russia did not accept Washington’s unipolar world in which Washington ruled, and that Russia would follow its, not Washington’s interest.  Putin’s declaration of independence was more or less ignored at the time, because Washington was involved in its wars in the Middle East for Israel’s benefit.......more.....