ORAC,
Your feeling is wrong, you may relax and feel more easy.
Especially the link between events in Ukraine and S. Chinese sea is obviously beyond any reasonable conspirology.
Who cares about the US elections here? Both candidates are bad in general and very bad for Russia.
China cares even less. No matter who is (will be) in the White House, they are concentrating so much mil. power in the S. Chinese sea, so that, IMHO, none of a US fleet could compete with them (to say nothing that US has nothing to do in their backyard). I was traveling not so long ago along/around the Hainan island (on vacation) and was surprised, though obviously a tourist can only see "a small top of an iceberg".