George Friedman, STRATFOR Chief (2015!):
Watch the artillery fire in the East. These are the drum beats for the future.
"The primeval interest of the U.S., what we fought the wars for for centuries - World War I, World War II, and the Cold War - was the relationship between Germany and Russia. Because united, they are the only power that can threaten us, and our interest was to make sure that didn't happen."
The U.S. strategy is to build an anti-Russian belt through the Intermarium (countries from Poland to Bulgaria), cutting Russia and Germany off from each other. Ukraine is geopolitically crucial to this:
"For Russia, the status of Ukraine poses an existential threat. The U.S. is in the process of building a cordon sanitaire ('security belt') around Russia. And Russia knows it."
https://t.me/ReinerFuellmichEnglish/267
cordon sanitaire
Intermarium