Russia is a curious case. The aim seems to have been to prevent the Russians team up with the Chinese when the west moved against them in a confrontation. The alternative view is the Biden administration undertook what they did in Ukraine with a view to tie down Russia , increase the dependency of their European allies on the US & cripple the EU's economy by forcing a breakdown in their energy dependency on Russia.
The US was never comfortable with the EU's emerging economic clout for that's usually a prelude to independent decision making . That's what the French were planning since long with ze Germans except Merkel was ambivalent about the entire thing.
With the UK out of the EU , the US lost leverage over the EU given the UK has always played a spoiler to the EU becoming more independent in its decision making unaligned to the US's policies.
There's another school of view that Biden given his old ties to China undertook what he did in the Ukraine Russia affair so that the US would focus on Russia instead of China. There was an ample bipartisan Cold Warrior lobby in the US who wanted Russia cut down to size who willingly obliged.
Methinks the opposite.
Their original scheme was to flip Russia to give them bases on the northern flank of China, this includes the Central Asian stans, iirc Kazakhstan has another border with China.
So as to this goal they did Regime Change protest in Russia in 2012 after Putya won the election there
Putya BTFO the regime changists and i guess purged all such traitors from Roos
They realized Roos is a fortress now so set their sights on Ukraine, the Maidan regime change of 2014 was a success.
Putin chimped out in panic and that's how you have the Crimea anschluss in the same year.
In 2021-2022 they tried to regime change Lukashenko of Belarus, but after a year of drama Russian "peace keepers" appeared and applied the danda to regime change artists, and Lukashenko bent the knee to Putya
A similar thing happened in Kazakshtan and once again Russian peacekeepers saved the day.
So I think this is why they baited him into Ukraine war, the EU wala reasons that you gave fit into this, it also means Russia is a European problem while they focus on the Pacific/East Asia, this is a final fuck you to the Russian regime change project, since they can't get Russia it is better that it be gimped fighting a long, grinding war.
The blowback of this are that Chong and Russia are in an inevitable military alliance, that of necessity and not choice.
Russia needs Chinese $$$ and tech to survive.
China needs Russian oil, coal, gas, minerals, metals etc to compensate for loss of access to global markets which will occur when the sanctions for Anschlussing Taiwan hit.
