One thing that people need to understand about Russia. You can't construct a modern worldview towards it. Russia operates with an entirely different set of logic. To call Russia's actions and MO to be from the 1880's, would be simplistic, but not too

Putin is at war with the US and with Europe. He's not strong enough (and really won't ever be) to attack either directly, so he attacks us using proxies. And it is a real war, with real shooting.

And don't think Putin isn't throwing everything he can at the US/Europe. He is. He's spending hundreds of millions supporting Euroskeptic parties (such as Le Pen, Jobbik, etc.), spreading risible paranoia through faux media sources, through its own propaganda channels such as RT, and through secret funding of media outlets on both extremes (including some on the left, The Nation is one). He's using as much violence/military action as he can get away with. And even with all of that....He's gained 20kms of Ukraine and Crimea. Expensive millstones around his neck that are costing him a pantload.

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Here's what Putin is trying to do.

1) Separate Europe from the US (e.g., weaken NATO). He failed, pretty spectacularly. Much of the European criticism of the US and NATO has quieted down. Europeans are spending more on their military. And Sweden is thinking of joining NATO. Even the Finns are moving towards NATO.

2) Damage European integration. Putin knows that a Europe led by Germany will not be friendly to Putin. To that end, he's spent hundreds of millions on Euroskeptic parties and risible propaganda. Result...not much.

3) Try to increase Russian leverage over European economies. This has been an utter disaster. Putin's south stream is gone. He's stuck trying to sell gas to Turkey. Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania have built LNG plants (or are building them) and are importing nat gas from outside Russia (Poland and Lithuania are importing American nat gas). Within 4 years, its possible that Russia will have less than a quarter of current export levels to Europe as it had last year. Russia cannot attack the West militarily. So its only weapon is energy.

4) Try and build links with Europeans or sectors of European society to support Russia versus the USA. Pretty much a failure. Russia can count on the support of one of its traditional allies in the region (Serbia - sort of), some sectors in Greece (until the Greeks realize that Russia won't be bailing them out), a paid off Euro microstate (Cyprus), and authoritarians in Hungary (Orban) and Turkey (Erdogan).

5) Work with nations outside the European theater to oppose the USA. Basically, loser nations where the governments are either authoritarian, hated by their people, or on their way out. Basically its a laundry list of loser nations like Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Argentina, Belarus (even they're moving away from Russia), etc. All of them have bad economies. This is largely noise. Even Iran has realized that the US runs the joint and they'd better talk to us if they want to help their station in life. China isn't helping Russia and isn't going to help Russia... They'll just help themselves to whatever they can grab from a desperate Russia. The only thing that can be sort of counted as a success is Turkey (but that probably wasn't Russia's doing, rather Erdogan being mad that we won't deport Gulen so that Erdogan can imprison him), but Turkey isn't really much of an ally. And hasn't been for a long time.

Basically, Putin has moved from failure to failure. He's lost 90 percent of Ukraine - forever. He's lost all credibility with vast sectors of Europe. His economy has taken a huge hit - and it will be continuing as the costs of his adventures will continue. Putin will do what he always does, escalate his way out of the crisis. But Putin's action plan is pretty limited.