Interesting perspective, you could be right. Putin certainly does seem to have massive ego. But he's been around since well into the cold war, it's surprising if he wouldn't know the game NATO is playing, and how to prepare for it. I don't claim to know much really about the Russian military industry, but we only need to know they've concentrated on things like hypersonic missiles, and seen pics of vast Russian tank factories using resources we could only dream of in the seventies when we won the cold war, and showed it by doing things like putting manned flights on the moon, and successfully commissioning commercial supersonic flights for passengers and having reusable space shuttles. This was a demo of the power of having the most availability to energy at the time, and we might say we since squandered it.
I think both China and Russia leaned a lot from that, and they now have the energy superiority, despite Putin's ego or oligarchic instinct, they have built up what they have by learning a lesson from us.
Now they are stronger, and I don't believe the propaganda machine of NATO can or will change that, but as you say a lot of lives are being wasted both on the Russian side, and Ukrainian side, it's NATO to blame for all that needless loss of life, and from the Russian pov, Ukraine is still part of Russia, so all the lives lost can be seen as Russian lives lost.
NATO propaganda is still working on our (UK) stupid politicians though.
600 million we just put in to the meat grinder will cost more lives, if the money doesn't devalue faster than it can be spent by the Ukrainian oligarchs, which is a real possibility, the act of putting the money there devalues it.
Imagine the amount of domestic and community infrastructure that could have built in UK towards giving everyone energy independence in contrast, and look, that investment would be towards UK gaining back it's own energy superiority, towards removing UK from the global energy slavery loop.
When will they / we learn?
Probably when our money is worth nothing and all our vital supply chains have gone bankrupt.