Thank you for the very detailed article It was always a folly to think that Russia would permanently allow NATO build a military presence 300 miles from Moscow. Now with a weakened US and a Biden presidency that has the slimmest of mandates, it is an opportune time for Russia to make a move. The Black Sea fleet needs the Sea of Azov to be a Russian lake and the 8 million people in Donbass with Russian heritage and language make it inevitable that the whole region will either be occupied a la Crimea or will be overtly under Kremlin control soon .

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/russian-chinese-collusion-and-the-approaching-fall-of-the-u-s-696e699e67da