He invaded back in 2014 when no sane person could have guessed Trump would get in.

From the perspective of the Russian people, it's a huge tragedy to send a whole generation of young men to die in the Ukrainian mud.

But I think Putin wants to go down in history as a great leader of Russia that turned the decline and Made Russia Great Again.

From that perspective what he's doing isn't dumb at all. At least if it succeeds.

The entire problem with "Make <blank> Great Again" and business monkey dick-waving in general is that it carries an inherent assertion of success, while doing very little work to actually make that success happen. So it doesn't really make sense to brush aside the implausibility and analyze it in the a posteri context of "if it succeeds", any more than indulging the fantasy of a child saying "I want a pony". And sure sometimes such gambles can actually end up working. But that's more for debt/confidence based businesses where keeping investors on the hook can win significantly more resources. At the level of national leadership, such delusions are just ignorant.