Your story is very intriguing. Why would he risks putting his country going into a deep recession with all the sanctions? Why would he wants to waste US$15bn per day of war when he could be able to occupy Donbas and Luhansk with much less fighting and won easily, like what he had done with his present occupied territories in Georgia?
IMUHO, this is my view on Putin's long term goals:
Creating and ensuring three new states may be the immediate reason for this Russian operation; this is also a strong warning to NATO. The long term aim is ...
I would like to call the present world geopolitical order as "The Petrodollar World Order". The immediate reactions probably would be that the term petrodollar is many decades outdated - everyone know about it. Just like the air we breathe, we don't reckon its critical significance until we experience waterboarding as with prisoners in Guatemala detention. The USD is daily on the news and we assume it is just about the movements in the forex market, going up-down as with every other forex. The USD is not just any currency. The USD is "the petrol dollar"; this has the utmost significance as to why the US is still the most powerful nation in the world today.
The world runs on oil. Talks about green energy is still hundreds of years away. As long as the world is using the USD in the oil trade, the US could tax the rest of the world in order to finance its military complex, running the bases around the world to encircle Russia and China, running their aircraft carriers. Take away the special status of the USD as the petrodollar, the military supremacy of the US would come to a halt. As Mao said: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun". To buy many, many guns require a lot, and lots of money. It is this petrodollar that enables the US to upkeep its military machinery.
The long term strategy of Putin in this Russian-Ukraine war may be aimed at destroying the current world order based on the petrodollar. The world's sanctions on Russia may not only cause economic hardships on Russia, it may also cause a breakup to the current world economic order. Who knows what would happen to the rest of the world - the stock markets, the world monetary system etc. This Russian-Ukraine war may be the spark to a new monetary system pushing Russia, China, India and others to start a commodity based money system - gold, silver and who knows also grains, etc. Just don't let the US to continue its control of the world.
You hit the petrodollar, you hit the solar plexus of the US - it's fatal.
"Einstein's E=mc² Is Invalid"
Chan Rasjid Kah Chew,
Singapore.
http://www.emc2fails.com