One Of The Rare Times When RT "Analysis"...

... not reporting which is useful, makes sense, albeit Poletaev, whoever this person is (Vatfor is a collection of amateurs), should have read this blog about ten years ago when I warned that, indeed, as the tittle to his piece reads:

Western ‘expertise’ on the Ukraine conflict could lead the world to a nuclear disaster. Pundits are completely out of touch with reality – which is why their views pose a danger to humanity 

Any serious military expert will tell you that it is good to have a strong enemy but who is rational and understands realities rather than some monkey with the grenade, even if it has the best of intentions, in a monkey sense of the word. Now, people ask me why I do not give John Mearsheimer a wide berth when it comes to Russia and war. Let me remind you that in May 2014 he, correctly, pointed out in his article in Foreign Affairs titled: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault. But this is as far as his "expertise" in Russia, warfare and economy goes. In fact, considering a well known feature of Washington establishment which makes its strategic decisions based on Hollywood and Kool Aid about own military "might" and economy, Merasheimer, who IS considered a sort of an "expert" in geopolitics committed in this piece a worst sin in medicine--Primum non nocere (First, do not harm).

Of course, some analysts might concede that NATO handled relations with Ukraine poorly and yet still maintain that Russia constitutes an enemy that will only grow more formidable over time -- and that the West therefore has no choice but to continue its present policy. But this viewpoint is badly mistaken. Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time. Even if Russia were a rising power, moreover, it would still make no sense to incorporate Ukraine into NATO 

This is exactly what they in Washington needed and wanted to hear (and read), because the whole premise of the clusterfuck they created in the last 10+ years was that Russia is weak, and that all Russia's offers have been not a rational conduct of diplomacy but the signs of weakness. And here comes the second most important tenet of medical ethics as derived from Hippocratic Oath: 

          I will not be ashamed to say "I know not"

Sadly, there is no ethics in American so called "strategic studies" and geopolitics and selling BS as knowledge is not only encouraged but rewarded handsomely most of the time. And here we are 10 years later and who knows how many millions of Ukies and tens of thousands of Russians killed and wounded.