Interesting background to the geographics, how the historical logic of defending Russia works, I didn't know that, thanks for the info.
But you added so much afterwards which just looks like opinion, trying to second guess Putin, who is facing a similar problem as the leaders of lots of other countries which have been gutted by the US "War on Terrorism", which now looks like a mask, for mass murder and looting, in other words, terrorism and regime destruction carried out by the West, driven by what looks like ultimately US criminal interests.
That has caused such a shameful loss of life and valuable culture throughout the middle East, it is a wound in our conscience that will probably never recover.
I think you are right, there is an information warfare capaign going on in Ukraine, but isn't only there, its everywhere, (remember Assange?) including even here in Medium, so we have to be very careful of what we read. Your piece is no exception.
In any case, the environmental warming problem puts everything into perspective.
We know that wars cause massive leaps in the pollution outputs of humanity.
Another war would be the last straw in an event that leads to extinction, of probably all life on Earth.
We literally can't afford another war, in terms of environmental cost.
And ironically, the environmental fix, of plugging into the sun destroys all capitalism, thus defangs all capitalist aggression, on all sides.
Why bother going to loot, when we have everything we need from the sun?