Why does Putin bother to construct a narrative around his invasion

It's interesting, isn't it, that Vladimir Putin goes to the effort of constructing a whole more-or-less-convincing narrative around his invasion of Ukraine.

First, he spends years financing and arming the two "separatist" regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk (aka Lugansk), in the industrial and Russian-dominated Donbas region in the east of the country. Then, yesterday, he officially recognizes them as "independent". And then he sends in "peace-keeping" troops. Et voilà! Abracadabra! Russia is in Ukraine, but it's not an invasion. He has the whole Orwellian doublespeak/doublethink thing down pat, as he talks of Ukraine being a US colony led by a puppet regime, and Ukraine's independence being a historical accident.

Of course, everyone and their dog (including, critically, the UN) can see perfectly clearly that it is an invasion of a sovereign state by a power-hungry megalomaniac, desperate to make a lasting name for himself and to resurrect the glories of the Soviet Union.

But the fact that he bothered to go through the motions of trying to make it seem legitimate is, I think, fascinating. Putin could turn out to be almost as interesting a psychological study as Donald Trump.