Putin's aggression in Ukraine seems really counterproductive to a lot of his stated goals. Why?

One of the things that's baffled me about the Russia/Ukraine situation is that it appears that Russia is either making a huge entirely avoidable mistake, or is taking on huge costs for an ideological vanity project.

Whatever they might conquer in Ukraine is not worth the damage to their economy that will occur, or the long grinding insurgency that seems likely. Wars of conquest fell out of fashion in the early 20th century precisely because land stopped being the limiting factor in economic growth and capital was, and you can't conquer capital.

Whether they finish their invasion now or not Russia already is already losing. Their enemies are united, their economy has a big target on it, and Europe has had what is hopefully the wakeup call it needed to divest of Russian fossil fuels as soon as practical. Actually invading Ukraine would add even more costs for little additional economic or political benefit.

Rather than assuming Putin is just crazy I wonder if he, and the Russian security apparatus by extension, have simply been caught flat footed by the (to them) unexpected unity of NATO. If Putin thought that the west was weak and ready to come tumbling down then his aggressive push would have seemed like a good, or at least plausibly successful, idea.

If this is the case I suspect that Russia did not recognize that the online dissension it has been sowing for years doesn't necessarily translate into actual institutional dysfunction. Not to say that all is right in the west, but the constant screaming match that is twitter isn't actually all that reflective of the everyday reality of the country, or the government. Basically Russia may have stumbled into an extremely awkward situation of their own devising because they were buying into their own propaganda.