[amai]

„ Ukraine’s place in this doctrine was accurately summed up by former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” The Russian establishment entirely agrees.“

This statement about Ukraine was presented by Brezezinski without any proof. In fact he just copied that idea from 19th century British geopolitics, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_Hist....

This theory was already controversial in 19th century, but in 21st century it is completely absurd. If you want to be an empire nowadays, you don‘t need a huge Black Sea fleet or a huge amount of land. You need a very strong economy. But occupying Ukraine will not help Russia accomplishing that.

It is absurd, that the Russian elite believes into a theory written by an American, which was originally proposed by the British in the 19th century to explain why they need to fight the Russian empire in the Crimean War of 1853.