It's quite expectable for someone who understands things about warfare, to make that mistake. See, Putin was seen as a guy who understands warfare, after all he

It's quite expectable for someone who understands things about warfare, to make that mistake. See, Putin was seen as a guy who understands warfare, after all he was quite successful in Syria (or so it seemed, until he eventually lost 3 years later). So few could expect him to launch an invasion so badly unprepared and so doomed to fail: only way it could have succeeded, in a hindsight, was if indeed, Ukrainians were eager to get out of the dirty hands of 'fascists' and back to Mother Russia, but everyone who wasn't living in front of Putin TV 24/7 knew it wasn't the case. True, vast majority of analysis expected Ukraine to fold quickly and probably majority of Ukrainians believed the same thing, but if someone was a true expert, they should have foreseen it - and thus, believe that invasion threat was just a game Putin played to get Ukraine to concede to some of his demands peacefully. That was a very rational thing to expect for someone who understood things. But instead, it turned out to be what it was: just a major blunder. Just as in 1941, actually. By 1941, entire world knew that Hitler was a military genius who never made a mistake. Who could expect a military genius to commit to such an absurdly foolish thing? And yet he did - and because no one could (rationally) expect it, he got all the advantage of surprise possible, and probably more of it than he ever expected - and yet he lost. Turned out to be not such a genius after all. But everyone who dismissed probability of him invading in 1941, had a point. Most rational and knowledgeable people should have dismissed that probability.