It seems you often interpret things the way you feel, instead of what was actually being said. You just did it again - I never said I agree this is a proxy war. As I said before, whether it is or isn’t is beside the point I‘m trying to make.
Funny how you call out the one thing I haven’t addressed after ignoring my rebuffs several times. Still, I took a quick look at the RAND study; it’s from 2019, they argue strategies to weaken Russia. After 2014, a move like that was already on the horizon - thinking about this stuff is their job. How you get from that to calling it „advocating“, and the claim it is a proxy war, and even think this is actual evidence of anything, is beyond me. There even is an editor’s note „There because Russian entities and individuals sympathetic to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine have mischaracterized this research“. That is my point.