I think that's exactly the plan, and I'd argue this has always been a secondary goal of the proxy war. The ideal scenario was to cause regime change in Russia, Balkanize it, and then create a bunch of puppet regimes that could be used to further surround China with military bases. The secondary objective was to ensure that Europe stays in US economic and political spheres. A lot of people in US were starting to get worried that Europe was getting entirely too cozy with Russia and China economically, and this would obviously translate into Europe moving away from US politically in the long term. Forcing Europe to become entirely dependent on US solves that problem.