Putin’s perspective is nonsense, and ISTM he’s making a catastrophic blunder here that could backfire spectacularly. Right now he’s making global heroes out of Ukrainian leaders and fighters, and villains out of himself and his cronies. And it’s not even clear he’s going to win militarily! Even if he does, he could be stuck in Ukraine for months or more fighting a bloodly insurgency. This just looks like terrible decision making that will hurt Putin and Russia (in addition to Ukrainians, quite obviously).