What is Putins end game?

He wants to restore Russia to the Empire that it was from 1721 onwards that included much of Scandanavia and went all the way down to Turkey . The war that happened at the time lasted 21 years.
Neither Norway, Sweden nor Finland want to become part of any Russian Empire.

Here is a link to the translated text of an interview he gave recently talking about his intention.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68606

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plungesponge · 41-45, M

I think overall his three ambitions are:

Stay in power, because losing power probably means getting quietly poisoned somewhere. And keep all that dictator money too.

Set up Ukraine to fail, either through mass military attrition, Ukrainians just abandoning the killzones, or getting starved economically or literally.

Revive Russian superpower status, as much as possible. This one is now seriously off track given how weak the Russian military ground game was, and how quickly Russia lost all the ties to other nations it still depends on for other tech, and how nobody wants to go to nuclear yet so all that murder-potential is currently meaningless.

Pretty much we are in a Mexican standoff now been Russia, Ukraine, the US and Europe. All four are facing colossal implications from the continuing conflict, and all are betting the other buckles under pressure first. My bet would be that Russia can endure the military ordeal, but it gets severely mauled economically. They seem to be aware of this and are trying to setup a new system with China and India