Gotta respect him for having such a brutal chokehold on the political psyche of nearly everyone in the west, save a few overly online dogmatists who have managed to out-rightoid/out-leftoid themselves out of the paradigmatic prison
do the slavic people require a yoke to keep them in check?
He is a generic Russian strongman. One we have seen many times before. It was public knowledge that he is a mediocre dictator. With the Ukrainian war one must now debate the question “is he retarded?”
Russia has more men to expend than Ukraine, and Ukraine is a core interest for Russia whereas Ukraine is a periphery interest for Europe, ergo Russia wins.