You're fairly sure based on what? Facts please? I can name a couple of reasons why your idea wouldn't work:You want a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine? I'm fairly sure in a first strike we probable would knock out their entire land based nuclear rocket capability, and their command and control facilities to create a long enough delay for our attack submarines to sink most of their boomers before they reach launch depth.
Fact: Russia has the best land based AA/Balistic missile defenses in the world.
Fact: They've got their land based nukes in hardened silos AND mobile vehicles like the Topol-M spread so far that trying to take them all out would be nigh on impossible.
Fact: Russia would be able to detect any incoming attack with enough time to launch their own.
A shooting war over Ukraine. Anyone wanting that is a cretin. I agree with Kissinger. You can't be foolish enough to expect Russia will ever accept Ukraine moving completely out of their sphere of influence. They would sooner launch a full scale invasion then let that happen.
The west will not fight a war for Ukraine. Even McCain is not moronic enough to argue for it.
At some point, some time, eventually, when the stars align and the chosen one is born the Russian people will turn against Putin over western sanctions. Until fantasy land becomes a thing we've got reality to contend with. Reality is that Putin's approval rating for all of December was 85%. Whether they feel about the way things are going or about lower ranked officials they do support Putin and will continue supporting him.Russia post Putin may be better or worse, but Putin post President would be in a pickle, so geographic containment and economic squeeze seems to be a better option. At some point, his electorate will get restless, and then either he'll resign or do something stupid that he'll get hammered for.
A population will not rally against a leader when they blame the sanctions on the west while Oil prices, despite conspiracy theories, are not controlled by any one country.