Uh-huh, so you're basing your entire interpretation here on ideology? War is capitalism and distraction? Have you considered that maybe events don't conform to idiosyncratic explanations just because you want them to?

For example, what about the "timing" is suspicious to you? It's established that Putin was hoping to mobilize sooner, but hit the pause button because Xi asked him to wait for the Olympics to end. Lo and behold, he obliged! The invasion began four days after the Olympics' closing ceremony.

Also, why would Russia care about capturing Ukraine's natural gas? Before the war, they already exported 250 billion cubic meters of LNG and the equivalent of 10.1 million barrels of oil a day. 70% of their oil exports went to Europe and the US and accounted for 37% of the country's revenue.

More to the point, they had the infrastructure to distribute it to the EU, US, Turkey, and elsewhere. Now they are under embargo and many of the pipelines they depended on run through Ukraine, thus cutting off a major source of revenue.

They depend on the pipelines extending across Ukraine and Belarus to get it to these markets. Access to these pipelines are how Putin maintained leverage over Yanukovych and Lubashenko for decades. The ousting of Yanukovych was bad for Russia, hence why Putin has been obsessed with getting rid of the new Ukraine government.

Meanwhile, Mid-term elections are still nine months away and Russia's economy has tanked AS A RESULT of the invasion. So where's the timing there?