My view is that Putin isn't trying to win, or that his win condition is different than we are calculating. He may be trying to get to a condition where he wins or nearly wins with 1/100th his ability to bring Zalinsky to the table to tell him, "You will not be friends with the EU or talk with them about joining. You will be an independent country at least. We have your phones tapped and we can hear your diplomatic conversations. If we hear anything again about the EU expanding to our border we will show you what real effort looks like. We'll have you dead in 5 minutes." Think about it. If Russia takes Ukraine then they still have the EU on their border in the form of Hungary-Ukraine. We played a dangerous game meddling in Ukraine essentially dissolving a buffer state. The best devils advocacy we could give Putin is that he is trying to reestablish a buffer state, in which case he doesn't want to destroy them, he doesn't want to end up with a nation building project, he doesn't want to be left with no explanation for his actions, and he wants them to feel intimidated knowing it could have been worse.