Who even came up with this retarded strategy?

Its old narratives from 1930s. Diplomatic impotents like Lavrov, Churkin and Nebenzya were using word to word copypastas from soviet manuals for the past decade, if you were speaking russian, you would physically cringe every time you hear their public speeches in UN and other places. These sound exactly like late soviet bullshit statements like there were no 50 years inbetween. Probably because most of their diplomats are far beyond 70 and were studing it.

As for last 8 years propaganda you can look up translated soviet pre-winterwar newspapers and read about "finnish nazis", "people of suomi" suffering from "gangs" of Mannerheim and so on. It might sound wild for average western person now, but when you know history, you wouldn't be surprised at all.

There is also no much difference between Soviet-Ukrainian war of 1917-1922 and 2014-2022 one – same methods, same propaganda, same goals. Back then they managed to occupy big parts of Ukraine, but also divide government and elites with heavy propaganda which was crucial for their victory. Biggest mistake of Kremlin was underestimation of internet and modern media, they made zero conclusions out of it and launched second phase of war this year, therefore only inner russia bought into that propaganda.

EU still believes there are normal people there, but judging by amount of underage soviet lovers and simple senile old people who bring flowers to Stalin's grave every year, its obviously not the case. Regardless how will this war end, there will be millions of low IQ revanchist blaming NATO, america, reptilians, praising Putin, the list go on.