[saiya-jin]

Putin is smart as hell, most probably sociopath on top. You don't get to be long term successful KGB apparatchik for nothing. The problem is, nobody who wants all that juicy freedom, democracy and other perks of good western life wants strong Russia, these things are exact opposites. Its by far the biggest actual threat to European democracy.

I come from country who was invaded by them in 1968 when we showed we may head towards democracy, and the Russian mentality remained the same since then.

Its sad germans as a nation are still heavily traumatized by what their ancestors did during WWII, and probably hell will freeze sooner than german army fighting, well anything. This leaves Europe severely weakened in eyes of nearby machos like Putin or Erdogan.

He could have built a fine prosperous empire that people are actually happy to live in. Instead, everything is worse and he just siphons tens of billions to same banks as discussed here via his buddies (UBS cough cough). It may be the Wag the Dog situation, but all above is still valid.