Heiner, I think YOU are the one who has a "patchy and biased understanding of history".
Putin is not the one who has a chessboard. The USA is the one who has the chessboard.
In fact, The idea of leveraging Ukraine as a "piece on a chessboard" to reduce Russia to a third-rate power was posited in 1997 by US veteran diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. He LITERALLY wrote a book called "The Grand Chessboard".
https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-pawn-grand-chessboard/5778417
In this book, Brzezinski wrote:
“America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena.” He adds “It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of challenging America.”
The best and perhaps only way to achieve this goal, Brzezinski said, was to pry Ukraine away from Russia.
“Ukraine is the critical state, insofar as Russia’s future evolution is concerned.” He says, “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
So you can see how it is imperative for the USA to keep the Ukrainians fighting and “bleeding” Russia - even if it is, as Senator Graham said, necessary to fight “to the last Ukrainian”.
So you see, my dear Heiner, Ukraine has not been sovereign for many, many years, and their "decision" to join MNATO was made for them in 2008 when George W. Bush, knowing that Ukraine was "the reddest of red lines" for Russia, pressured his NATO "allies" to issue an "open door invitation" for Ukraine to join - saying that he wanted to "lay down a marker".
In laying down that marker, Bush sealed the fate of Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have not had anything to say about their future ever since.
Likewise in Georgia. We see what the West is doing, we see how groups like USAID and NED and the CIA are working day and night to manipulate those populations.
Show me a pre-2014 poll of the Ukrainian population that shows a majority wanting to join NATO.
I bet you cannot, because every poll showed that the majority of the people of Ukraine did NOT want to join NATO or the EU.
That is why the US had to engineer the Maidan Coup.
