Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's poor game theory. Russia is a Mongol horde. Suing for peace against tribal border raiders (cooperate) is a rational strategy. If they know you'll always cooperate, then their best strategy is to always come back and attack (defect). Each time you achieve peace you lose land. So, rational strategies are bad. You want to adopt an irrational strategy where you appear to be a crazy person willing to hurt themselve…
Only if you're correct about them being a Mongol horde and not a rational actor, but their actions were predictable and were in fact predicted by professors years ago who understand the geopolitcal landscape and history of NATO.
In real life Putin changed strategies in a way that made his country worse (turned into a Mongol horde) but personally improved him (gave him more power over the country).
You can ignore anything he says; it's not meant for you and he doesn't care if you hear it or believe it. It's like when Russians say that Ukraine is run by Jewish Nazis. It's not intended to be truthful, which is why they don't care they've caused /more/ countries on their border to join NATO.
By "professors" you presumably mean Meerscheimer, who's basically like a cynical politics poster who thinks everything is about "making hard choices" and so is in favor of anything that sounds like it's "making hard choices" even if it's wrong.