If you think Putin is swayed by hotcopper posting you are delusional.
The US three letter agencies attempts to destabilise Russia in a misguided vision of global USA hegemony are the main reason this has transpired IMO. They played the hard right Ukraine nationalists like a fiddle as per the Rand Corporation playbook, and those Ukrainians are dying in droves for the US vision to destabilise Putin. The US leadership (Biden) is so weak it has almost no role in the direction the country takes. We all saw what happened to Trump when he dared attempt to make the US foreign policy less hegemonic.
IMO Putin wanted to strengthen economic and cultural ties to Europe but EU leaders (with a few eastern European exceptions) have no backbone to stand up for what they think is right.
