Part of the confusion, I think, is that Putin has tried to paint this conflict (to the West) as an existential threat. NATO on the doorstep of Russia itself!
Yet judging from the confusion and awful morale of the Russian troops (which could be less than the full truth but seems too widespread to be made up) along with the substantial internal protest, it seems that Russians themselves don't believe this, at all.
(the same thing could be said to some degree about Iraq in 2004, but the coalition troops themselves were pretty gung-ho about it at least, for the most part)
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