I am glad you mentioned these, because it raises another point. There have been many attempts to rationalize what Putin has been doing and to try and find some example of a strategy in all his blunders. But there really doesn't appear to be any.

This is not dissimilar to what many have tried to do with former-president Trump. His actions were so erratic and his failures so acute that many people I've spoken to thought there HAD to be a plan that we just couldn't see.

But these are a clear case of paradeolia, where we try to see patterns where none exist because we can't believe that sometimes, things are just as stupid and chaotic as they appear to be,