My concern with this idea is that I think we are conflating "this is not what I would have done" with "no rational person would do this". Right now, today, Russia is worse off than I would have expected them to be. But an irrational action is something like being afraid of a NATO attack and then invading Kenya. Things like the nuclear talk are all easily explained as standard issue brinkmanship in negotiations and diplomacy, amped up to an uncomfortable level for a purpose. You can defeat Ukraine, occupy some of it, establish a rump puppet state as a buffer, and turn your gaze elsewhere (MUCH easier said than done, but doable). You can accept significant economic consequences in exchange for an effective warning to the world that you can and will use force if your critical demands are not met. All of this might be a bad idea, maybe even a disastrous idea, but it's not fundamentally irrational. So as I look at these reports, I look through the lens of "what has Russia lost that they can't get back?" The answer to that for me is very little if anything. What has Ukraine lost that they can't get back? Maybe nothing, but maybe their capital in a week. My point with this is that there is a clear path to a situation in which Russia is obviously better off than they were a month ago. There is also a path where that doesn't happen, but don't forget that the same people touting the unimaginable financial consequences to the Putin regime are also celebrating the repulsion of an amphibious assault that probably couldn't have conquered the Georgia Bulldogs, let alone Georgia the state, Georgia the country, or Odessa.
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