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For two decades, Vladimir Putin has often presented himself to his rivals as reckless and impulsive. But his decision to strike Ukraine – and now putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert – has led some in the West to question whether the Russian president has become mentally unstable.
In recent days, Putin has spoken on television about Ukraine, repeating conspiracy theories about neo-Nazism and Western aggression, criticizing his intelligence chief in front of the cameras while sitting alone on the other side of a Kremlin hall. Now, with Western sanctions threatening to cripple Russia’s crippled economy, Putin has ordered a state of highest nuclear weapons readiness, blaming the sanctions and what he called “aggressive statements against our country.”
Uncertainty about his mental state adds another element to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Western officials have to face Putin, as they also question his ability to understand or take into account the cataclysmic consequences – or perhaps he is deliberately using long-standing suspicions about him.
An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke with Putin on Monday, said the Russian leader responded to Mr Macron “without showing irritation or emotion and in a very firm way”.
“We can see that with President Putin’s state of mind, there is a risk of escalation,” added the aide, who spoke anonymously in line with the French presidency’s practice of sensitive talks. “There is a risk of manipulation by President Putin to justify what is unjustifiable.”
Foreign leaders have long tried to get into Putin’s head and made mistakes. Even in this crisis, Putin is showing many of the same traits he has displayed since becoming Russia’s leader. Mr Putin has led military operations against neighboring countries, conspiracy theories and outright lies, and has ordered bold operations such as interfering in the last two US presidential elections.
He alone made historic decisions such as the annexation of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014, consulting only with his close circle of KGB veterans and keeping everyone else in the dark. He has long been surrounded by military men who are reluctant to risk their careers without even calling for caution, let alone expressing dissenting opinions.
He also talked about nuclear war and once thought that such a conflict would end with the Russians going “to paradise as martyrs.”
Experts say Putin could use the spectrum of nuclear conflict to break growing support for Ukraine’s defense and force concessions. His recent comments also suggest that sanctions are working.
“We need to know that this is a sign that we are touching,” said Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and senior fellow at the Center for New American Security. “It simply came to our notice then. “We have to stay cool.”
US officials were alarmed by a 5,000-word essay published under Putin’s name in July arguing that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and blaming foreign intrigues for any division. A Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the intelligence community was concerned that Putin was acting “out of emotion” and driven by the wrath of the past.
Recently, President Macron went to meet with Mr. Putin and had several long phone calls before the attack. A senior official in President Macron’s office said last week that Mr. Putin “was no longer the same,” had become “more rigid, more isolated,” and had essentially shifted to the approach we are seeing now.
During a five-hour dinner between the two leaders, Putin spent more time discussing NATO enlargement and the 2014 revolution in Ukraine than discussing the current crisis.
Putin’s perceived self-isolation was evident in recent official meetings broadcast on state television. He met with foreign leaders and close aides standing on the opposite side of a long table. No Russian official who spoke gave the opposite view.
“He has not had so many people communicate directly with him,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. “So we are concerned that this isolated individual has become a megalomaniac in terms of his notion that he is the only historical figure who can rebuild old Russia or recreate the notion of the Soviet sphere.”
Putin has long been committed to regaining lost glory, suppressing dissent and keeping neighbors under Moscow’s orbit. In 2005, he called the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Russia has waged war on Georgia, annexed Ukraine’s Crimea, sided with separatists in eastern Ukraine, and earlier this year deployed troops briefly to help quell protests in Kazakhstan.
His public outrage at Ukraine’s sovereignty dates back many years. In 2008, he reportedly told President George W. Bush, “George, you have to understand that Ukraine is not even a country.”
A year ago, he expressed his anger at the United States and NATO in a keynote address at the Munich Security Conference, striking at the alliance’s eastward expansion and attacking US military intervention abroad. The U.S. was immersed in the Iraq War at the time, based on false allegations that Iraq had nuclear weapons capabilities.
“The United States has transcended its national borders in every way,” Putin said. “This is evident in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other countries.”
Two years ago, President Putin approved the latest version of a Russian nuclear prevention policy that allows the use of atomic weapons in response to a nuclear attack or aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence of the state.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide Dmitry Medvedev, who served as the country’s president when Mr Putin was ousted as prime minister due to term restrictions, said in 2019 that a move by the West to separate Russia from the SWIFT financial system would constitute an effective declaration of war – a signal that the Kremlin could see Western sanctions as a threat equal to military aggression. The sanctions announced in recent days include the removal of major Russian banks from the SWIFT system. The ruble has fallen sharply since then.
In 2018, Putin told an audience that Russia would not strike first in a nuclear conflict, but warned of retaliation for an imminent enemy attack, adding with a smile: “We would be victims of aggression and would to go to heaven as martyrs. And they will simply die and have no time to repent. “
James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he did not believe nuclear war was imminent, but had real potential for escalation. Another possibility was that Putin would use increasingly brutal non-nuclear tactics in Ukraine.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear policy expert at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, said he was not currently concerned about a nuclear escalation. But one danger of sending public signals about nuclear weapons is that they can be difficult to interpret, Lewis said, as the world now tries to understand Putin’s latest moves and intentions.
“He is isolated and makes bad decisions and is losing,” Lewis said. “And that’s dangerous.” Voa
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