[int_19h]

Bluntly put, what makes Russia so "irresponsible" is that they know they can get away with it from experience. This will continue for as long as the collective West keeps behaving in ways that make it clear that it would do anything possible to avoid a confrontation.

Note that there's a difference between talk and action. The West likes to talk about holding Russia accountable, and making a show of it with token sanctions. But when even those token sanctions are routinely skirted by Western companies operating through intermediaries in third countries while Western governments look the other way, Russia knows that all this talk doesn't matter and can be ignored.

It also doesn't help that talking about what needs to be done to be able to reliably push back - i.e. more defense spending, more investment into military infrastructure and manufacturing, helping your allies etc - gets politicians voted out of office in so many Western countries these days.