The amazing thing to me is that Putin is suppose to be this great grand chess master genius capital Hornblower. And yet, Putin's greatest flaw is that he thinks that he's so smart that he doesn't need to understand his enemies. That's his problem. He doesn't understand Americans. He doesn't understand Europeans. He doesn't understand the Eastern European states that aren't NATO (Finland, Sweden, and etc.).
It's not that amazing. Vladimir Putin is a teenage miscreant. I don't know what happened to him to make him disregard his conscience or prevent him from developing one in the first place, but that man's mentality is fundamentally Lord of the Flies and he's never graduated into an adult.
He grabbed power in ways that a grown up adult man, a person of maturity, humility, self awareness, and humanity, simply can't. But that doesn't make them weak. They just have to rely on intelligence, empathy, our human strengths. It's hard because the world reveres aggression and thinks "balls" means courage, when it just means animal brain fight reflex, aggression, and physical strength, which have nothing to do with courage.
Russia over the last few decades is exactly what happens when it is taken over by a teenage boy who never received healthy parenting or love and started abusing his power as soon as he got it. He might have had a chance to heal and be a decent, grown up human if he hadn't gained power, but morons who are impressed with alpha bullies and others who just feared him allowed him to take whatever he wanted, and we see the end result (as we have many times before) of stunted manchildren in power.
That's the thing about ruthlessness or even just utter lack of conscience in more cowardly men (like Trump). People around them think having the capacity to harm others for fun and profit equals human strengths. The world tends to treat males and their aggressive and cruel activities according to positive hero filters.
And he damn sure does not understand in the least the Ukranian people. Ironically, this will be his downfall in time.
He definitely does not understand the Ukrainian people!
Side note on that topic: one of their drones was taken out by a Ukrainian woman when she threw a jar of pickles at it.
Regarding Russian Sanctions: bring it on!
NOOOOO it will destroy us!!11!!!!1