The oligarchs who own and operate Russia are all fascist ultra-nationalists (I repeat myself). They all spin around in the same circles. And while they may not make as much money with this war going on, most of them are eyeing the long game, not just another billion laundered and sitting in the West for another vacation and mistress.
They've been reading and implementing the type of political ideology as written in this book:
en.wikipedia.org
Slowly encroach upon neighbors and annex land. Ukraine is "nonsense" and is actually Russia. Sow discord within the United States so it loses its power and/or breaks up into smaller pieces (This part was Trump 2015-2021...the US leaving potentially leaving NATO, Russia getting special treatment by Trump, etc, and it will continue to accelerate if the fascists continue to win elections here.) Get Britain to leave the EU (Russian "troll farms" are actually cyber warfare, hello) weakening the EU and turning Britain into, wait for it...Airstrip One for the US.
So, I don't buy the "Putin is alone and sad" thing. He's doing just fine. He may not be able to annex Ukraine, but he isn't going to just disappear into one of his palaces and binge watch storage wars.
I just hope that there isn't a nuclear exchange...because there is definitely a non-zero chance that nuclear weapons get used.
I've said it here and elsewhere, but the Oceania vs. Eurasia vs. Eastasia thing is the current trajectory, and we're starting to see Eurasia attempting to consolidate. Next up is Eastasia with Taiwan/southeast Asia.
Oceania is still mostly pursuing the whole individualistic democratic republic thing...for how much longer depends on what is happening right now in Ukraine. What I'm hoping is that after Putin's puppet got kicked out, Putin lost his ability to just accept Ukraine back into Russia via a Ukrainian puppet giving it to him. If he fails to annex Ukraine via war, I don't think a pro-Russian puppet will be able to get elected and just hand Ukraine over to Russia, "postponing" Ukraine "rejoining" Russia.
We all get to watch it in near-realtime I guess.