‘This explanation makes more sense to me than the “Putin feels threatened by NATO expansion” excuses for the invasion.’
If Putin actually felt threatened, he wouldn’t be poking the lion with a stick, would he?
Remember, Putin’s main excuse for starting this war was to “demilitarize (i.e., disarm) and de-Nazify (i.e, time-honored tactic of employing a bogeyman to justify an action) Ukraine. That is blatant, unwarranted aggression against a neighbor. Russia started all of this. But for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nothing that followed would have occurred.
He’s acting under the assumption that he can intimidate the lion, who’s lost all his teeth and his main is mangy, and he’s suffering dementia besides.
That depends who the lion is. If it’s Brandon, he’s got a point. But it’s not Brandon.