I am glad you wrote this, because Russia does not have a logical reason for going to war, except one: Its own idea of power.

Russia thinks it is much more important than it is. It used to be a superpower but only because of its military. It never was an economic powerhouse, and today it still is not an economic powerhouse.

Russia is a weird nation. It is still top-down in its power structure. The Russians are not empowered other than by superficial words of empowerment. Putin gets rid of all his real political opponents. The Enlightenment never happened in Russia.

I do feel for the Russians. When the wall fell, Russia invited US economists and they are partly to blame for the problems in Russia. Instead of taking the bottom-up approach that Russia so desperately needed, the American economists started promoting selling off the big State-owned pieces of value. Very quickly, the new Russian elite had all valuable items in society in hands, and this started the situation we are in today.

Had they not listened to US economists and instead handed out all items already in the hands of the people (such as a home/apartment and a vehicle or whatever they were using on a daily basis). If folks became the owners of their own stuff, modern economic thinking would have sunk in quickly and all across the board. Painful for some when they undersold their valuables, or when they went into debt too much, but lessons learned quickly.

Instead, all the biggest items went to the elite, and the regular Russian did not get to experience modern and liberal economics, but rather had to adjust to a shifting of the guard of the new economic leaders in top. The population was never liberated. Only Gorbachev had some understanding of what needed to be done, and Yeltsin quickly undermined all that.

I feel for the Russians. They are sheep and they are brought to the slaughterhouse by their new owners. They are boots on the ground in a neighboring country, slaughtered for reasons not of their own.