1. I don't think there was ever any real chance that the U.S. President could have stopped Putin from invading Ukraine if he wanted to, no matter who is President. So the talk by the usual suspects that claims this is because of Biden's "weakness" is simply bullshit. The U.S. is not the only actor in the world. While it is a powerful nation that can make many things more or less likely to happen, a country as strong as Russia with a long-standing grievance against a neighbor who is determined to address the problem militarily is going to do that regardless of what the U.S. does or says. Anyone who claims otherwise is just posturing for political reasons.
2. Russia's decision to officially recognize the two so-called breakaway republics in Ukraine and to send in Russian military forces as "peacekeepers" is not a huge change on its own. Russia had already unofficially been treating them as separate from Ukraine for several years, and it has also been unofficially providing military assistance to those regions in its low-level conflict with the Ukrainian government.
3. The reason it could be a big deal is only if the recognition and Russian military infusion is a prelude to a larger conflict in Ukraine. And that is exactly what it seems to be. There are several scenarios that could make this a stepping stone to a much better conflict. For example, the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic claim a bit more territory than the breakaway regions ever actually controlled. So by recognizing the DPR and LPR is Russia recognizing their entire territorial claims of those entities? If so, will Russian forces embark on some new offensive to bring those areas under DPR and LPR control? Even without that, DPR, LPR, and Russian forces are going to try their best to provoke Ukrainian forces, which would then be used to justify a large-scale attack of Ukraine, possibly including an occupation of the entire country.
4. I think whatever Putin decides to do will ultimately go down in history as a massive blunder. The bigger his military adventure is the bigger the blunder it will turn out to be. As it is, very few countries are giving any recognition to DPR or LPR. Even Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Republic that is pretty close to Russia, has close Russian ties, and whose government was just bailed out by Putin is not buying it. This finally got the Germans to cancel Nord Stream 2 (something that many critics of Putin have been trying to get them to do for years, with Germany refusing up until now). Russia is going to find itself increasingly marginalized and sanctioned internationally even if it doesn't go the full-scale invasion of Ukraine route. And if a full-scale invasion does happen, the government of Ukraine might collapse, but the Russian occupation will face a difficult-to-defeat insurgency that will cause real pain to Russian soldiers without any easy solution. Meanwhile, a war with Ukraine is quite unpopular among the Russian people, and opposition is likely to grow when it becomes a slow grind and the Russian people start suffering the economic effects of sanctions. If opposition grows strong enough, that could even threaten Putin himself.
5. The West might be in for a lot more cyberattacks, but the Russians are probably going to be in for them too. Plus, if the tit-for-tat cyber attacks continue for an extended period, the Russians are likely to get it worse, just because with most of the world against them, there will be fewer workaround options when things go wrong.
6. Time is not on Russia's side. Russia has some massive problems that will ultimately haunt them in the long term, and being on the outs with much of the world (especially the parts of the world that controls a lot of wealth and resources) is going to hurt them. Russian population is shrinking. This is partially due to the fact that Russia is the largest country with a large resistance to COVID vaccination and thus likely has really large numbers of unreported COVID deaths, but that's also probably not the whole story. Russian population was declining before the pandemic. COVID is just accelerating things. Russia's economy is also not very diversified. It is almost entirely dependent on oil and gas production. Changes in oil and gas prices can instantly cripple the Russian economy no matter what Putin does. While in the immediate term this crisis is going to drive oil prices up (and it already has) which will benefit the Russian government, it is accelerating the European drive to be less dependent on Russian oil and gas. Finally, Putin is getting older and less popular at home, without ever designating a successor. Each of those issues by itself is a massive potential threat to Russia's long-term viability. While Russia could address each one, if it is bogged down in Ukraine it will make dealing with any of those much harder.
7. As I've mentioned before, if Putin is doing this to stop or reverse NATO expansion, it is likely to backfire. NATO won't lose a single member because of this, and it could lead to Sweden or Finland joining the alliance. It will (and has already) also lead to greater militarization of existing NATO countries that are close to Russia. So if the whole point of this was to put an end to NATO getting too close to Russia and encroaching upon Russia's historic sphere of influence, it is going to do the exact opposite.
