It may have been rational to start the war from Putin's perspective but in no world it is rational to continue to pile in resource when they are obviously losing both the war and any remaining political influence globally.

At this point the war is continuing purely to fuel the ego of a dying dictator.

Putin's irrationality is his insistence that Russia can take on the US as a major imperial player. Whatever you think of US imperialism (not a huge fan, personally) the reality is that the US is a hegemon which has the resources to run the largest military and intelligence operations on the planet.

Russia isn't, and doesn't. Russia isn't even close. So it uses political subversion instead of outright militarism. Which - it turns out - is possibly the one domain where it's competitive with the US. For not all that much money, some info war campaigns, and the help of internal allies, Russia almost got itself a two term president with eyes on a permanent dictatorship.

Nice plan. Didn't quite work.

But Putin decided to go ahead anyway. Which is insane. Every single goal - weakening NATO, weakening the EU, building closer relationships with China, India, and Turkey, strengthening Russia internally, cementing his own position in history as Tsar Vladimir I, saviour of the Empire - has failed, disastrously and counterproductively.

So now Putin has two choices. Admit defeat and have an unfortunate accident with a window, or burn everything to the ground out of spite and frustration.

He's not going for Option 1. So it's up to everyone else to make sure Option 2 doesn't happen.

> China overthrew the government, installed a pro-Chinese president

The first problem is that this "analogy" is not an accurate parallel to what happened in Ukraine. The US had no boots on the ground whatsoever.

There were mass protests, and then the elected parliament removed the president. Later, the people by a wide margin freely elected the current president, who is ardently against Russian interference.

There's not a democratic outcome here where "China" is illegitimately foisted upon the people of Canada.

> If the US attacked Canada ... would that be irrational?

No, because the US has the capability to invade Canada.

What's irrational about Putin is the self-defeating nature of his decision making. Both self-defeating for his country, as well as for the stability of his regime which translates into his personal safety.

He's embarrassed himself and his country, pushed Ukraine more towards the West, and achieved none of his strategic objectives.

I hope he is just behaving irrationally because of bad advice. The alternatives are more scary, because then the madman thing might not be an act.

you think the west was not slightly involved in making Ukraine an anti Putin regime? things did not happen naturally there.

I do think they were slightly involved. They invested a few billion dollars into pro-democracy organizations inside Ukraine, starting in the early 1990s, and held close diplomatic relations with Ukrainian politicians. None of this is abnormal, it's the standard practice of US soft influence.

But it's not even close to an exhaustive explanation. The Ukrainians have agency, they have their own media ecosystem, they are capable of forming their own opinions. They saw Putin as the dictatorial thug that he is. Putin achieved that by himself by invading Georgia, poisoning his opponents overseas, rigging elections and assassinating journalists.

Anyways, this isn't relevant to the question of Putin's rationality.