He's not nuts, just evil and pissed, he is doing this to survive in the end, or so he thinks. Right now he is shocked, confused and pissed as the magnitude of his blunder becomes apparent to him. Don't do too much to excite him right away, play by the rules even if he doesn't. He needs time to cool down and think for a spell, his people don't get western media, but I'll bet Vlad does and so do his buddies, he speaks pretty good English and German and they are multi lingual too. This is his circle, the opinion of the people around him and important to him, those who support him. If his own people weren't telling him the truth, the western media soon will!
Vlad blundered bigly, he didn't know himself or his enemy, had no plan B and invaded at the worst possible time at the beginning of mud season and even tanks are confined to the roads that are choked with his supplies and their wreckage. It ill be weeks before the ground dries out enough for him to apply combat force and meanwhile the Ukrainians are organizing, arming millions of men with surplus soviet weapons and training them too with NATO help, Tractor trailer convoys are delivering arms and supplies deep into eastern Ukraine by the hundreds of tons daily. By the time Vlad is ready to start Armageddon he will be flat broke and Russia will be coming apart at the seams. That is why uncle Sam is jumping in with both feet, the Ukrainians can win, all their troops will be combat troops, young women and older men will do logistics supplied by NATO.
This is an investment in the future for NATO, if Vlad manages to fight in Ukraine on any scale, it will bleed his army white, destroy most of it's equipment and really fuck Russia even more. Every man there will have a tale to tell back home and Ukrainian propaganda will be broadcast on their military radio channels, they only need captured radios and cellphones hooked up to play recordings or live stream information to the Russians along with popular music. The Russian troops are news starved and will listen, the old analog radios are in most of their equipment...