Pretty good summary. Personally, I would have thought that Putin is smarter than this, I really did. Dangerous, deeply undemocratic for sure, but not stupid. He played the West, and NATO, for years as he pleased. He created opportunities for Russia and China that didn't even remotely exist before. And then he threw all that away for a pointless war, one he might very well be loosing, a war that will only drive even more of hos direct neighbors into the arms of NATO. A war that also creates the global climate that those countries can, without any big problems, actually join NATO. All that while isolating his country, destroying his legacy and utterly ruining Russia's economy, to a point where he might very well throw Russia back to the early 90s.

No idea why he thought any of that was worth the risk...