I am one who thinks that this war has a lot to do with resources. Not as much capturing the Ukrainian resources (mineral, oil, gas, food, water,... ) but rather about not allowing those resources to actually being put to use by Europe in collaboration with Ukraine. But there is a lot more about the war:

- From Adolf Putin's perspective, hi conceptual map of the RF is large cities in Russia (mainly Moscow & St Petersb.) + others to be ignored, dominated or controlled. This is based on how the draft and the recruitment for the army is conducted and the casualties that prove that nationalities and soldiers from economically deprived and politically ignored regions are killed more often.

This strategy is not specific to this war, it is just the way RF wages war with Putin. Offering salaries that make a big difference for people from minorities and poorer regions so that they go and fight the minorities in other countries and kill each other while the Russians of Moscow reap the earnings and manage "Russia Inc." Soldiers will sign-up as they may simply not have any other perspective of progress.

Just imagine an scenario in which the regions of RF that really hold the economic resources (Siberia) decided that they would be better-off without someone in Moscow telling them what to do. Would it not be interesting, it is much better to keep them ignorant, poor and let them kill among themselves.

- As of today "Russia Inc.", similarly to "Saudi Arabia Inc." is mainly a petroleum export based economy. It is not the only export, but it is a huge export and Putin's RF tends to wage war when oil prices are high. The EU does not expect the RF to respond to sanctions. It expects to drastically reduce the flow of money that is required to pay the troops, the logistics and the production. More than 50% of energy exports go to China + Germany. More than 50% of exports are oil & energy.

To put it plainly, Ukraine is in the middle between point A and point B in the oil and gas trade. A huge mega-project (Nordstream 2) has been built just to skip that "problem", but a corridor between RF and "Transnistria" would allow a route right into the norther Balkans area, with the chance to get strategic dominance of the area as well. Needless to say that cutting Ukraine from the sea would give a 100% leverage to RF over the Ukrainian economy apart of the side advantage of having more frost free ports.

I believe that US & UK have been very keen in not letting this happen. The resources used to protect Odessa allowed for the sinking of the Moskva (which I personally believe had plenty of US support in the operation that is NOT being as prolific in the east).

- I think that the US has a mixed interest. They can certainly supply "attack" capabilities. The moment that HIMARS were supplied, many advanced munition and weapons depots "mysteriously" exploded. And that is without the 300 km specialist munition yet being supplied. This is the US solution to not shooting into RF territory but also deplete the front of shelling and fuel supplies.

Anyway, many angles in this war. Not everything is what it seems. I am now trying to make sense of what will happen with the nearly 2 million Ukrainians have been "moved", many presumably by force (so deported), to RF territory. Will they be used to reconstruct the flattened "new republics"? used as slave labour? We may not know in decades.