> Putin has fairly literally said that, including in his speech immediately after the commencement of the 2022 escalation. If you can show me the quote where P

> Putin has fairly literally said that, including in his speech immediately after the commencement of the 2022 escalation. If you can show me the quote where Putin said "I disregarded geopolitics and launched this invasion to satisfy my fantasy of conquest" I'll eat my hat. Again, this has been the standard Russian playbook since the 1700s. I find it awfully difficult to believe that Catherine the Great was making decisions to stroke the ego of a man who wouldn't come to power until 200 years after her death. > I assume you mean the 2022 escalation, and not the invasion starting the war in 2014 I'm pretty sure if you could only label one of those two events as "the invasion" it would unambiguously be the one in 2022. That being said, the idea that Russia would handily defeat Ukraine in a conventional war was widely believed in 2014 as well, hence the long struggle to avoid the conflict escalating.