Foreign Affairs

That's been their goal since 2015 when the Russians got Trump ready to run. Putin has advised Trump on everything including January 6. He was waiting for Trump to pull the US out of NATO before invading Ukraine. If Trump had done that before the 2020 election, he would have lost in a landslide.

Putin was waiting to see if Trump would seize power before Biden's inauguration. When he didn't, Putin started the special exercises on Ukraine's border in March of 2021. Russia's goal was to intimidate the under-armed and equipped Ukraine so that when they invaded they expected the Ukrainian military to collapse and Zelensky to run. That didn't happen.

Next they needed to convince the MAGA stooges in Congress to say the US couldn't afford to keep supporting Ukraine. That didn't work either so Russia had Iran convince HAMAS to attack Israel so that could be used as a pretext for the Republicans to say "we have to support Israel and we can't support both Israel and Ukraine". And, on Oct 7, 2023 the attack happened.