I mean, Occam’s Razor says he’s just incompetent, honestly. And he’s had a bit of an obsession with tariffs for a _very_ long time. He’s been going on about them since before the fall of the Soviet Union, so unless you’re speculating some sort of secret Putinist rebel cell within the former Soviet Union influencing him 40 years ago, it’s probably just that he’s quite stupid.

Also, this kind of ignores how dependent Russia is on _China_. If this were actually at Russia’s behest, China would hardly even be bothering with mirroring tariffs; it would just call Putin to heel.