It has quite a bit to do with it when we factor in how the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly started WWIII when the USA faced a Soviet maneuver identical to US backing of Georgia and Ukraine and threatened to unleash canned sunshine in response. Odds are that Putin intended something much smaller scale and is re-learning the oldest lesson in the book: starting the war is easy, ending it is hard, and doing so while avoiding mission creep mission seep is astronomically difficult.