The natural election cycle is pending though. I want to believe this is his last term.

Does that involve wrecking their economy and killing hundreds of thousands of males in a rapidly declining population?

I guess it is easy to avoid the election cycles when you constantly put opponents in jail, or kill them. Why didn't we think of that?

And for all the time Putin has to lay out his master plan..what did it buy him? A river of Russian blood in Ukraine?

If Russia was playing the long game then Finland would never have joined NATO.