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Does Putin seem reasonable to you? I think it's pretty possible that he will be willing to take the whole world to the grave with him.
Absolutelly - so far he seems to be rational.
Not necessarily wise, certainly not morally upright (quite the opposite), but yeah, absolutelly rational.
He started a war to conquer territory and resources, likely based on certain expectations of capability of the Russian Military which were far from realistic as well as expectations on the Ukranian Military and Society which were also far fromrealistic. He went for a decapitation attack expecting Zelenskyy to be killed, captured or flee but none of that happenned and thus the "easy way" failed. From there onwards, as a dictator who has anchored his authority on an image of "strong man", we couldnt simply back down so everything that has been happenning since has been him trying to ideally gain something out of a bad situation or at least not to lose face.
All pretty rational. Not exactly strategically intelligent but certainly rational.
As for the use of nukes, notice how the ever increasing talk about using it from the russian authorities maybe a year ago suddenly stopped (except for fringe types and well known powerless russian muppets) when China made it very clear they would have to do something about it if Russia used those...
Even a strategically inept but rational actor can't miss the implications of China turning against Russia.
In hindsight, all he had to do was setup an assination squad before mobilizing troops in 2022. Had he killed Zelensky before the real fighting happened I think the country would have been very demoralized and it would have been much harder for them to get aid with a new leader, even if it wasn't a Russian plant.
And the more gains that they would have made earlier on, the less likely the West would have been to send aid, less it fall into the hands of Russia or some new corrupt politician.
Without the aid, Russia would have already won by now.
Apparently he did try it, several times, after the invasion started.
I suspect that in Putin's mind, before Zelenskyy revealled himself as a real leader ("I don't need a lift, I need ammo"), he was nothing more than a week "western-style politician" and comediant who would easilly fold.
It's very easy with hindsight to say he should've tried to take him out beforehand but at the time he (or, lets be honest, any of us, even the US President) really didn't know Zelenskyy's character: for all he knew back then, killing Zelenskyy might've just be taking out a weaker man and end up with a stronger man leading the Ukranian Government only by then Putin's hand would've been revealed.
Sure, it makes sense now, but back then knowing what he knew then, for Putin it clearly did not.
Again, it's like failure to do even the most basic research. He had all sorts of plants in Ukraine in before all this started, it would have been relatively easy to have spies to a character assessment. Just like I really don't understand why he wouldn't have done an equipment specification before moving all this equipment with dry rot and other failures. He had to have known that the everyone was skimming at best, and straight out stealing at worst.
Considering that even the US' intelligence failed to spot Zelenskyy's character as a war leader, I think we should be wary of proclaiming that the russian's could've find it out with "the most basic research"...
In fact people often don't really know if they'll rise to the occasion in such a life and death situation themselves until faced with it.
As I said, it's easy to look at it now and think "it was obvious", but that's due to hindsight.
What was rational in this war?
He wanted territory, mineral resources and even human resources (lots of industrial production in the territories Russia took) and expected the mighty Russian Army would crush the Ukranian Army (just like when they took Crimea) and the rest of the World wouldn't do much more than bitching & moaning (again, just like when Russia took Crimea). Apparently he was even expecting his men would be welcomed by the ukranians with open arms (remember how the head of Russian Intelligence was fire not long after the war started because of that?!) and that the rest of Europe could be controlled via Economic Pressure because of its dependency on Russian Gas.
It makes all sense that having overestimated the Russian Army and underestimated the Ukranian people and its Army as well as the will of the West to genuinelly help Ukraine (and looking at all the pussyfooting around providing modern jets and long range missiles to Ukraines, I would say that at least partially that's true), it looked like a good idea to begin with.
Once commited, given the style of leader he portrays himself as and the overreliance on nationalism to control the russian people, he was stuck with the Ukranians pushing back with western help and unwilling to give up and being politically unable to just conced the War as that would be almost literaly putting his neck on the block.