Ill, ‘unhinged’, or calculating? Russia’s Putin keeps everyone guessing
- Kremlin-watchers in West question Vladimir Putin’s mental state and actions as war rages in Ukraine
- Russian leader has long cultivated an international image as cool-headed and calculating
The “madman” theory is a long-standing political trope, redolent of Cold War-era rivalries. The idea is to throw opponents off balance by making them believe you are so volatile, so hostile and so irrational that there’s simply no telling what you might do next.
Is he genuinely unbalanced, they ask, or just letting everyone think he is? Or some combination of the two? Or something else?
Some veteran observers are wary of drawing conclusions from afar.
But others who have kept a close eye on the 69-year-old Russian leader during his more than two decades in power believe some fundamental personality shift has occurred – whether because of physical illness, drawn-out isolation prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the insularity and sycophancy of Putin’s inner circle, or a burning sense of historical insult coupled with aspirations of imperial grandeur.