> Russia is playing a very stupid game here.

They are not, if you take the larger context into account - and that is China and their saber rattling not just against Taiwan but also against everyone else in what China thinks is "their" influence sphere such as the Philippines.

Russia's warmongering (not just in Ukraine, but also via Syria, Iran and Yemen!) is breaking apart both the US and EU internally - recent elections have shown that both populations are pretty much fed up with the wars and their consequences, and once enough countries either fall to Putin's 5th column outright or their governments pull a Chamberlain, China can be relatively certain no one will intervene too much when they decide that now is the best time to annex other countries.