Putin isn't Russia and he isn't his armed forces, and he doesn't press the buttons himself. There's a command and control system in Russia and those generals will need to give the orders to destroy the world, and they'll understand what it means to give those orders. Some of them will be currently in talks to Russian oligarchs about the situation in Russia who will not be pleased by any of this. Russians don't have a problem with military coups taking out their leaders.
Your logic only makes sense if Putin literally is Russia and that's the foreign policy mistake that most Americans always make by characterizing states strictly and only by cults of personality around their rulers and forgetting that there's other people in those countries.
At some point if Putin starts ranting that he's going to nuke NATO then he's going to get overthrown.
There's still a logic around this whole situation, and all the participants in the game, including all of Putin's generals and every powerful Russian, understands that logic.
(Also I strongly doubt anyone here is qualified to diagnose Putin as having dementia and I don't think he is -- he's making massive strategic mistakes, but that just indicates he's been smoking too much of his own information bubble for way too long)
I have been reading non-US sources that have observed that Putin has superficially declined in health and there are rumors that he is in poor health.
I agree the Putin is "not Russia", but he is a strongman, and Russia has a history of very strong autocrats. I really hope you are right about the Russian military and those officers in charge of the nuclear armament.
We'll see, this will be a fascinating chapter of post-Cold-War history.
Your logic only makes sense if Putin literally is Russia and that's the foreign policy mistake that most Americans always make by characterizing states strictly and only by cults of personality around their rulers and forgetting that there's other people in those countries.
At some point if Putin starts ranting that he's going to nuke NATO then he's going to get overthrown.
There's still a logic around this whole situation, and all the participants in the game, including all of Putin's generals and every powerful Russian, understands that logic.
(Also I strongly doubt anyone here is qualified to diagnose Putin as having dementia and I don't think he is -- he's making massive strategic mistakes, but that just indicates he's been smoking too much of his own information bubble for way too long)