My guess is that Putin just way overplayed his hand. A decade or two of his tricks to undermine NATO and the West got him overconfident and he thought he the fu

My guess is that Putin just way overplayed his hand. A decade or two of his tricks to undermine NATO and the West got him overconfident and he thought he the fundamentals of NATO were weaker than they are. Dictators have a tendency to surround themselves with yes-men over time as well, that's probably playing into this some. Now I'm sure he realizes he miscalculated, but it's unclear how to stand down.