I don't know as the failed real estate developer could have managed anything this complex but wouldn't rule it out either.

A more prosaic and less sexy explanation would be the U.S. insistence on breaking the treaty we signed over twenty years ago vowing that NATO would not expand "one inch" beyond the German borders.

Between that and our support of neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine (yeah, really), it was inevitable that Russia would feel threatened and react with violence.

If Zelensky would go to Putin and convince him that there would be no NATO and no EU expansion into Ukraine, this might be defused.

But it's probably too late. Men love their wars.