"showing force" is such a light way to describe it, this is full scale invasion into Europe, with the target to annihilate whole country while impotent civilized west watches it unfold in the fears that they may be next.

It’s not so much fear they may be next. It’s clearly a hesitance to engagage in a full-scale global war.

I didn't mean to describe it in a light way, at all.

I fully agree with your description that this is a full scale invasion into a sovereign country.

Dutch national news channel NOS had a historian and journalist called Hubert Smeets on. I'm Dutch, and will paraphrase what he said:

Interviewer: "What can the west do, what can the NATO do? It's said that military action is not going to happen, why?"

Smeets: "Very little. The consequences would be very large. This night, in his speech, Putin insinuated how Russia is a global nuclear superpower, and he said that the unthinkable could become thinkable. So that's off the table. All we can do is take economic and political measures; sanctioning, even if we don't know what the effect of these sanctions will be. And turning him into a political pariah, even China said Putin should not pull through on this evasion."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm7JiO4tY_Y&t=1036s

That's how bullying works.

What’s strange to me is that Putin is behaving a lot like Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait. So he either must really fear regime change of some sort will happen soon, or thinks the West is OK with this.

So how many nukes did this Saddam guy have? Do you think that can change the calculation?

Real nukes or imaginary ones used as a pretext for invasion?

The ferocity, speed and coordination of the invasion suggest it's not just Putin - this is exactly how a unanimous agreement of all political and military elites look like. Judging from history - we won't hear about the true reasoning behind the invasion and the events preceding it for another 30 years at least