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> This is one of the most pointless and unnecessary war, fully instigated by a dying imperial power.

Agree with dying imperial power. But the war was not "pointless". Putin saw an opening. The way out of "dying imperial power" was to reconstitute the former Russian Empire (temporarily known under the name of Soviet Union). Bismark made Germany great by conquest. Germany fought 3 wars during his time (vs Austria, Denmark and France) and won all of them. All of them were instigated by Bismark, none was a defensive war. After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population.

If Putin could have conquered Ukraine in a matter of days/weeks, then all the other former Soviet republics would have folded in a matter of a few short years, and with this Russia would have doubled its population.

Putin's big blunder was to not know how inept (and corrupt) his own military was. All the talk about NATO aggression was just a pretext. He was simply hoping to quickly finish the job and present the West a new "fait accompli", just like what he did with Crimea.

We are actually very lucky that Putin let corruption fester inside his military.

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- Austria was on the decline. It was threatened by both Germany and Russia. They chose to ally themselves with Germany which they perceived as the lesser of the two dangers - Russia was growing. They were threatened by Germany. They allied themselves with France and later the UK in the Triple Entante. - France was declining. Germany was their natural enemy, not amount of diplomacy could change that. On top of that, they still felt the sting of the 1872 defeat. - Germany was growing. They were on the verge of becoming hegemon. They knew that France and Russia would like to attack it from both sides. They perceived that if they attack first, they stand a better chance to get a better deal in the end - UK was slightly on the decline. They used to be the undisputed hegemon of the seas, but now the new German High Sea Fleet was becoming a real nuisance. If Germany were to win the continental wars (like Napoleon 100 years earlier), they were going to be in big trouble. It did not take them long to figure out on which side they should fight (despite all the royal family connections). - the Ottoman empire. They were not a great power anymore. Still, if they perceived a threat, it was mostly from the Russian empire, which had had for about three hundred years the nasty habit to keep chomping at their territories