If there is anything we can take out of the current conflict is that being a NATO member as a country is exceedingly important. I am unsure Russia would have made all the moves it made against Ukraine if the latter were a NATO country.

Also, mr P managed to do what the US hasn't achieved - make Germany put a ridiculous amount of money in the defense budged - exceeding the 2% of the GDP that was asked by the US in the past.

Every way you look at the current situation it is undescribably stupid and dumb, I don't care about "super sekrit intelligence information", the backlash from the US and the EU to the Ukraine invasion is incredible and continues mounting up. All that mr P can hope right now is that he doesn't end up in jail for life at the end of this whole debacle.

I doubt that, otherwise he could back out now and that would be enough to prove that he will invade other countries to back up "Russian interests". Looks like he's all in this time though. Maybe he has a terminal disease and just doesn't care?

He's 69. In ten years he could be backstabbed or forced to leave. There is a tradition of that sort of things in the SSSR. If he wants to be reminded as a father of the country by doing something more substantial than rebuilding the might of Russia (which he did) this is the time to do it.

Off-topic: when reading the wikipedia articles that talk about "hot topics", if you want to see a less biased version, it pays to check edit history. In this case the page was last changed in November 2021 [0], before a set of changes occured starting at 21st Feb 2022. So... Be careful to at least notice the propaganda when it is happening.

(I don't have a proof of course, ymmv, and all that...)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foundations_of_...