Putin could have kicked back and enjoyed his dacha like other less powerful dictators do all over the world, but no, he had to write a "scientific" treatise about Ruski Mir and how the Ukraine isn't actually a thing. He wants a legacy.

Well, he got it and whatever happens in the war, Russia is cooked. It's never coming back from this.

It will either fracture from the war going badly, or it will become a vassal state of China, and ironically, perhaps the US, the way things are going with the White House these days.