"Vladimir Putin's astonishing lapse of judgment in invading Ukraine has fueled speculation that the Russian president may have taken leave of his senses."

Who wrote this click-bait of a poor quality? There are pretty sane and accurate analysis why Ukraine invasion looks like it is and it has nothing to do with Putin being crazy or "had lapse of judgment".

The most important reason why invasion is failing is "Russian peace" (Ruskij mir) - Russian version of Pax Americana. This is the ideology that says that all "Slavic" nations are somehow Russian brothers and sisters, only some of them are occupied by alien "nazi" forces and Russia will free willing Slavic citizens from their Nazi-narco-addicts torment. If you feed everyone around with this kind of propaganda you can't send 500 thousands army to Ukraine since it would suggest that Ukraine citizens are not really waiting for Russian troops with flowers. That's why Russia had to attack Ukraine with insufficient forces, couldn't do proper army mobilization.

Putin and FSB indeed underestimated four elements, but it has nothing to do with Putin being insane:

1. Willingness of Ukrainians do defend their country - a lot of has changed since 2014 both in terms of national identification among Ukrainians and in terms of military forces readiness, the easy path to overtaking Crimea in 2014 did not repeat in 2022.

2. The second thing was NATO (especially USA, UK and Poland, there were some NATO members that were much less enthusiastic) readiness to support Ukraine with both military equipment and, what is much more important, with military intelligence. Satellites, spy planes cruising all day and night over Poland are providing very accurate information about Russian troops movements that's why Ukrainians know when and where they can safely counterattack. This latter aspect is a true "game changer".

3. The size of sanctions against Russia and seizing its reserves in USD and Euro, kept in banks outside Russia - this is a slow killer, but after month or two it will start destroying Russian ability to repair military equipment. Putin was right in his judgment to some extent, Germany, Italy, Austria that are heavily dependent on Russian gas and oil import, France that has a lot of investments in Russia were opposing at the beginning of the war, but, probably Blinken and Biden were very persuasive plus there was a lot of social pressure, even in Germany.

4. China view of this war. During Chinese Winter Olympic Games China and Russia signed some deals, but right now it is clear that China is not that enthusiastic about the invasion and it is clearly looking on the situation development. China cannot be happy also about sudden unity and mobilization against enemy in Western World plus they see how NATO is good in military intelligence and how big is the space between Russian military equipment, capabilities and NATO's one. China's army equipment is in many fields very similar to Russian or is its direct evolution and this equipment seems to be torn apart my rather simple weapons delivered to Ukraine - NLAW, Polish Piorun's, Javelins are short range last-chance anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon, nothing fancy or advanced, but still they manage to cause a lot of losses.

The silent 5th reason is an obvious failure of Russian psy-ops operation. The picture of Ukraine, possessed by Nazis who wanted to attack Russia with chemical and nuclear weapons, who train birds to spread biological warfare and all of this is done by narcotics addicts is really hard to sell. Some will buy even the most stupid propaganda (like Paulo Coelho) but for general public that sounds nuts.

Another thing that is missing in this article is the process of firing atomic missiles. There is no such a thing like red button kept in some suitcase, which was popularized by Hollywood movies - using nuclear weapon is a process that involves several people, so one crazy person, even such powerful as Putin wants to be seen, cannot get crazy and irrationally attack USA or whatever other country.

It does not mean that Russia will not use tactical nuclear weapon, they have this way of acting in their strategy, and such move will also has nothing to do with "irrationality". In fact from the military perspective it makes perfect sense to attack Kiev with nukes, but it is hardly doubtful if Russian would risk that.