I despise this western-centric view- were only the people in the west are real people, that can make decisions for themselves, and the rest is just pawns for playing a funny great board game.

The idea that even a new-born nation, could walk out of the board game and do its own thing is so outrageous to the players, it is not even considered.

Well, ukraine just tried that. Its a sovereign nation, and it wanted nothing to do with its imperialistic neighbourhood. And all the zhars horse and all the zhars man, could not hold all its conquered ethnicities in again and again, cause technology now favors david instead of goliath.

So ukraine might not walk this time, but others will, until this ball of muddy-power dissolves one last and final time. Russia, this unreformable assembly of thiefdoms, is stumbling like a feverish plague victime towards the end of its story and it will not be pretty. To blame this corrosion on the west, is pompous victim blaming.

Russia is also falling apart near the chinese border, were large parts of the economy are now owned by chinese state owned companies. Its just a failed state and to the man with glass-bones-disease even a friendly handshake is a attack.