Given the atrocities that Putin was prepared to unleash it would have been a better path to take. But there is no equivalence in responsibility for the destruction and deaths. That is firmly in the hands of a Russian leadership that felt it had the right to do so on some pretext of its own defence and show of power to his own people.
If Putin's actions within Ukraine and Russia define serious leadership then I am afraid I can never agree with your opinions on Zelensky.
I don't think I ever compared Putin to Zellensky regarding their responsibility for the mess, let alone claiming their equivalence. If you must know, I think they are chicken and egg.
Your second paragraph is even more puzzling - don't think I ever opined whether Putin is a "serious leader" (a phrase you brought up) either, but in any case what has that got to do with your agreement or otherwise to my counter-argument to your saying Zellensky is a "serious leader"?
Putin wanted to invade Ukraine in order to depose Zelensky and install a Moscow friendly puppet regime. Bear in mind that Zelensky - whatever you may think of him - is a democratically elected leader.
I am not sure what you wanted Zelensky to do under these circumstances.
It has now been reported that the KGB spent billions of USD fostering a "shadow" government in waiting - one can only assume that Putin thought the existing government would be toppled within a few days, a new regime installed and the West would grumble but not do too much. In reality it appears that the KGB "assets" took the money and then didn't enact any part of the plan when the invasion happened, coupled with rumours that much of the money didn't even get to the Ukranian assets in the first place, which sounds entirely plausible - I bet there are some KGB agents with healthy bank accounts.
All in all, this sounds like a gigantic miscalculation by Putin at virtually every decision and the Ukranians are paying for the fact that his ego would prefer every Ukranian city turned to dust rather than lose any face at all.
I don't know why you think Putin wants a puppet regime. Even an armchair expert like me could tell puppet regimes can't last if people are hostile, which most Ukrainians must now be if not before.
Ukraine had a choice of either
being permanently neutral or permanently divided - but since Poroshenko and Zellensky seriously messed up, I suspect Ukraine's future will now be permanently divided AND permanently neutral (in Western Ukraine). I imagine the latter will be formalised in a Treaty with performance monitored and "encouraged" by world powers which might include Russia and aren't all already in NATO's bed - assuming Putin has learned the lessons of Minsk/Minsk II.
What has "Zellensky being a democratically elected leader" got to do with the price of fish? Putin is arguably a similarly democratically elected leader, so is every single American president who waged and facilitated wars/atrocities in foreign lands leading to more deaths and suffering in recent decades than anybody else. So is our beloved Boris. So was Hitler, actually.
You say this sounds like a gigantic miscalculation by Putin. I accept this is a common/popular opinion in the West, but assuming you accept the
numerous expert warnings over decades that this was coming due to NATO "expansion" (else please do tell why those experts are wrong and you are right), I am curious how you arrive at the conclusion.
I ask because, firstly, given his complaints, threats and ultimatum were ignored*, what better option did Putin have to halt NATO expansion into Ukraine, to stop the imminent deployment of intermediate and short-range missiles threatening Moscow/Russia, and to stop Anglophone NATO countries giving $billions in military equipment and training to a hostile Ukraine in a proxy war which had already claimed 14,000 lives?
Secondly, is the cost-benefit so clearly one-sided? Ruble - USD exchange rate has just shot back to the level on the day of the invasion, and
the rest of the world, especially Europe, will be hit hard for years to come by both primary and secondary effects of the war/sanctions, and whom I suspect will regret, being (mis)led by hegemonic US foreign policies, in leisure.
Going back to Zellensky, it might be useful to see through the fog of war, by reading Western reports before rather than after 24th Feb.
This one is on Zellensky. I doubt any NYT journalist would be brave enough to publish it today.
* a long list of Putin's grievances, relatively objective i.e. free of Western self-serving speculations, with links to plenty of useful references, can be found in
this article. One example being the new Neptune missiles Ukraine was to field in coming months capable of hitting Moscow within minutes, prohibition of which fell away after US withdrew from the INF Treaty with Russia in 2019.
