It is one part frustration: Putin feels that since 1991 Russia has been lectured to and dictated to by the West — that NATO expansion has been a solo act on the part of Washington, DC, which believes it has the power and the right to call the shots not just in Western Europe (which would be OK) but on Russia’s doorstep, in Ukraine and elsewhere (which for Putin is not OK). Putin harbors grievances and resentments toward the West and is using this crisis to express them…

Another aspect of his self-confidence is his relationship with China, which he did not have in 2014 and which may encourage him to think that he can withstand and overcome Western resistance or Western pressure. He also judges his incursion into Syria in 2015 as a success and may think that in foreign policy, he’s on a roll.

It is also one part a low opinion of the West that is driving his behavior: He claims to believe that the West is in decline, that it is not what it used to be, that American foreign policy in particular is a record of overreach and failure (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), that the United States is internally divided and less committed to European security than it says it is — and that Europe as such, whether the European Union or the individual European states, is weak, lacking in organized military power and deathly afraid of military conflict, such that the threat of this conflict may succeed in garnering concessions for Russia.