I'm sure racism is a component, but to me it reads more like the arrogant self-righteousness the West engages in, mixed with falling for their own propaganda. Americans, at least, still think the stories from the beginning of the war of massive Russian losses and Ukrainian farmers taking out battalions of tanks are still true. When you try so hard to create this image of the invincible underdog, you shouldn't be surprised when your own side plans for that kind of impossible prowess. Everyone in the West was stirred up into a frenzy about the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause, the tenacity of the Ukrainian people, and the miraculous heroics they allegedly pulled off. I'm not surprised that, at some point, someone actually fell for their own lies. They're paying for it. Or rather, the Ukrainian people are paying for it, sadly.

Breaking Russia economically and causing a regime change was the hare brained scheme from the west. However, that whole plan relied on being able to sanction Russia effectively. The reality is that Russia is just too big and too integrated into the global economy for that to happen. So, when the west started trying to freeze Russia out of the global financial system they found out that India and China weren't on board, at which point the whole scheme fell apart.

What's worse, we're now seeing that it's actually the west that's having growing economic troubles while Russian economy is growing and domestic industry is developing. The relative cost of keeping this war going is far more significant for the west than for Russia. Europe in particular is screwed because they got cut off from cheap energy they were getting. Meanwhile, Russia has no problem selling energy to other countries. So, in practice it's Russia breaking NATO through attrition as opposed to the other way around.

The west trying to go the terrorist route is a possible scenario, and it has been openly discussed. However, that carries dangers of its own as well. What's likely to happen is that Russia will annex all the regions that are heavily populated by the Russian speaking population. People there just want the war to end, and they will integrate into Russia. Then there's going to be a rump state of western Ukraine left that's full of nationalists. It's not going to be able to function on its own, and it will become west's problem because if it fails then there will be a flood of refugees coming to Europe. This is the nightmare scenario for the west where they either have to keep pumping billions of dollars to prop up whatever's left of Ukraine or deal with a huge flood of refugees that Europe's not able to absorb.

And of course, the fascists will end up feeling betrayed by the west at this point and they will realize they've been cynically used. I expect there will be at least as much terrorism happening in Europe as in Russian controlled territory as a result. CBS put out a report a while back stating that only 30% of the weapons made it to the battlefront. The rest end up on the black market, and it's almost certain that Ukrainian fascists have been linking up with far right cells across Europe and feeding these weapons to them.

So, I agree with you that this is the likely US plan, but I predict that it's going to backfire the same way the proxy war did. US completely misread the situation and they've made huge blunders over the past two years that are now culminating in a debacle for them.

The thing is the russian MOD and putin have plainly, and explicitly said that they would not occupy ukraine and set up a government, and that they would not pay for any of the damages in the war. The russians have only held the russian speaking areas in ukraine, and there's a good reason for this. The imperial core wanted to russia to fight a occupation style war, similar to how the soviets fought in afghanistan. But the SMO has been conducted completely differently, the russians fight a defensive war, and force the ukrainians to be on the advance. Ukraine cannot win the war in a situation like this.

Pretty much what I'm expecting.