Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I really thought that the most Putin would do is send his troops into the Donbass and reinforce the resistors there. He would have been denounced by Ukraine and the West, and he would have been sanctioned too, although not to the extent he is being sanctioned now. I didn't think there was any chance he would try to take Kyiv, and for two reasons: because it involves killing and destroying, and that is always wrong. And second, because it's impossible. The Ukrainians would never stop fighting him. And they would continue to get material support from the West forever. Perpetual war is the best Putin could have hoped for.  He could never win, and he should have known it. And really, it was insane for him not to know it. 

So, Putin, is, for all practical purposes, insane. An individual man can go insane. But, can a whole country go insane? Can the leadership of a whole country go insane? How could his whole inner circle be insane? And once they realized that he was going to do an insane thing, why didn't they stop him? No matter how powerful and autocratic he is in Russia, ultimately, he is just one man. And one man can be stopped.