I’m sure Ukraine doesn’t feel like it’s fighting a puppet dance. Just because the US has made bad decisions before doesn’t mean that it’s doing a bad thing now, nor does it means that there’s anything wrong with incentives being aligned. All international relations are based on aligned incentives of self interest, not just those of the US.
That both are abhorrent but we wouldn’t be where we are today if NATO hadn’t been extending its membership eastwards since the end of the cold war and running arms deals with countries on Russia’s border.
