His intelligence source....
"The Ukraine is weak!"
Ukraine looked like a pushover. His compliant intelligence sources told him it was.
The U.S. President Biden showed himself to be weak and incompetent. He appeared to give Putin the go-ahead, with his famous "as long as Russia doesn't take too much" line.
NATO and the USA had done nothing as he gradually grabbed more of the former USSR back into Russian control.
It all went spiraling into the toilet when the Ukrainians refuse to follow the program, fought back with everything at their disposal, and halted the Russian blitzkrieg.
The West, startled by what it saw, felt compelled to support Ukraine, for their own defense.
Here we are, in a quagmire.
Putin mistakenly believed he had a competent military
His intelligence source....
"The Ukraine is weak!"
The ‘West’ had been supporting UKR since at least 2010.
Obama gave them blankets.
Trump gave the TOWs.