He moved troops to the borders, waited for a response. And this response was what he expected to be: just sanctions. This gave him the "ok" to invade.
Sending troops would be a clear signal. Costly, but you can also see it as a good exercise.
To be honest this war does make me doubt my assption that Putin is very rational and predictive. What is the rationale behind such a full-scale invasion? I don't see benefits that outweight the costs. I am happy to hear them, if they are any.
The "NATO Problem" is probably just a ruse to rile up support for his amibitions.
Well, by that logic Russia should give back Königsberg and eastern Poland..
He's psychopath-rational.
A lot points to the fact that Putin has extensively prepared and calculated the benefits and costs of all the possibilities and endgames. Everything, including how we are talking about it here is potentially a component in this strategy.
What is difficult for all of us here in the West to comprehend, is how completely different the elite Russian POV is from our own. I highly recommend looking into the Gerasimov and Primakov doctrines.
At the same time, Putin is pretty old and has been in power for so long that there is a real chance that he has become narcissistic. There is a real chance that he has developed a misperception of his own strength and that this is a turning point. Something similar happened to Napoleon at a certain point.
By looking at a map, this is quite evident.
In the graph of adjacent nations, Ukraine has a high betweenness centrality
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Ranking-of-centrality-va...
The things about NATO is what he says to mislead people -- and maybe that is a rational step in his restore-the-Soviet-Union dreams
With modern logistics, I don't buy the geographic argument.
To be this is just Putin playing cards the rest of the civilized world have decided you can't play.
He accurately perceived weakness.
> I don't see benefits that outweight the costs. I am happy to hear them, if they are any.
His priorities are different than what you think they are/should be: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/lavrov-rus...:
> Their intentions are different from ours too. Putin’s goal is not a flourishing, peaceful, prosperous Russia, but a Russia where he remains in charge. Lavrov’s goal is to maintain his position in the murky world of the Russian elite and, of course, to keep his money. What we mean by “interests” and what they mean by “interests” are not the same. When they listen to our diplomats, they don’t hear anything that really threatens their position, their power, their personal fortunes.
And the West's "punishment" may actually enrich the people who started this war:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/politics/russia-biden-...
> And perhaps most notably, Mr. Putin and his closest aides and partners in Moscow might not suffer much themselves from sanctions, analysts say....
> Some of the hard-line nationalist men around Mr. Putin were already on a Treasury Department sanctions list and accept that they and their families will no longer have substantial ties to the United States or Europe for the rest of their lives, said Alexander Gabuev, the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
> “They are the powerful everybodies in today’s Russia,” he said. “There is a lot of posh richness. They’re totally secluded. They’re the kings, and that can be secured in Russia only.”
> Furthermore, because of their roles in state-owned enterprises and their business ties, they are “the very guys who are directly benefiting from the economy becoming more insulated, more detached from the outside world,” he added.
