I don’t discount Putin as a madman, tempting as that may be. Nor Hitler, to whom the Russian tyrant has lately drawn facile comparisons. Certainly, Putin’s bellicose actions boggle the aggregate mind. A diagnosis, a name for what he’s got, why he’s not quite right, seeks to reconcile the desire to understand with the inability to do so. Our minds, then language turn to the latest DSM, foraging for a clinical disorder to label, not explain, how and why this man has committed the world to war. Thus far, the groundless ground war Putin has waged includes:
- routinely, deliberately targeting civilians and life-sustaining infrastructure,
- putting the world’s biggest nuclear weapons arsenal on high alert, thereby cocking the proverbial barrel of the atomic gun,
- shelling, starting a fire, ultimately occupying Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear plant in Europe,
- breaching ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and safe passage agreements,
- (at least one) assassination attempt on Ukrainian President Zelensky; while
- silencing and persecuting the independent press,
- censoring and repressing dissent, and
- restricting media and telecommunications in Russia.
This litany of abuses grows by the hour. Debating whether or not a certain brand of crazy fits Putin is reductive and irrelevant. It also obscures the catastrophe and does nothing to stop it. (Not to mention compounds stigma for people living with mental illness, to be associated with a mass murderer!) Meanwhile, he is orchestrating a new world order, deploying the military force he’s been rehearsing throughout his rule — in Chechnya, in Ossetia and Abkhazia, in Crimea and the Donbas. He has set and stepped onto the stage of a more spectacular, bigger-is-better conflict. In this theater of war, Ukrainians and Russian troops are dying, more and more by the hour.
With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last month, Putin has started what will, I write with trepidation, become World War III. Even more petrifying, I think he meant to do it, at least considered the possibility and decided that the grave, far-reaching consequences were worth it. He’s ready to die on this cross, but not before crucifying countless other people. I hope to be wrong. But it has been clear for weeks, if not years, that Putin does not negotiate. He, or whatever official face represents the Russian Federation, puts on a bad faith show of diplomacy, stealing time to advance the takeover Putin sees as destiny. He is a zealot on a mission, one that is delusional and fatalistic, at once and interchangeably.
Putin’s delusion of grandeur is that he can resurrect the most expansive physical territory and borders; access and control of resources; spheres of economic and political influence; and preeminent role in global geopolitics and power dynamics that Russia held under the guise of the Soviet Union. He wants to be Stalin at the height of his power — same, but different. Over the years, Putin has come not only to embrace but sanitize the architect of the Great Terror, outlawing any critical discussion of the USSR’s participation in World War II, with Stalin at the helm and credited for victory.
Known as the Great Patriotic War, when twenty seven million people from the Soviet Union perished and everything changed forever, this is the seminal historical memory flashing before Putin’s eyes and coloring his vision. Being a patriot — read: male citizen — means compulsory military service, conscription.1 Being a soldier, an officer, a veteran, especially of WWII, earns venerated social status, a deference inculcated from childhood. Being “Great” implies a magnitude matching the country’s historical, geographic, and mythological girth. In Putin’s hands, this may spell going nuclear.
If that weren’t fatalistic enough, he must know that sooner or later, he will fall. No telling when or how, but before that inevitable day, Putin is determined to take with him as many purported enemies as possible.2 That’s why he violates international law so brazenly, let alone morality and human rights. Spouting flagrant and dangerous distortions of history and reality, he has taken to shouldering the mantle of a militaristic, omnipotent ruler, triumphant and awe-inspiring.
This is Putin’s favorite cape to wear, portraying his tsar-like self-image. It hearkens and reinforces the vision he’s bent on fulfilling: to collect on what he perceives as Russia’s pseudo-ancestral entitlement to land, authority, and renown. Hence, he aims to win, to get away with it, and to become “Great” in the process. Because no real enemies present themselves, he has invented them and called them Nazis. (This topic, I’ll tackle in the next Dispatch from Far Afield.)
Putin has chosen to exert and amass power through brute force (abroad) and repression (at home). Now, he’s reaching for the monstrous scale of his icon Stalin, but without the context of that war, without Hitler or real Nazis, without communism or any fixed ideology. Only the quest for power at all cost. The incursion on Ukraine and the wider international conflict it may spawn are throwbacks to the past. They are already rewriting the future. Almost assured, Putin had his sights on more than Ukraine when letting this madness loose, and he may still, even when significantly slowed. His belief that he can win these wars may be delusional — above all, because there is no winning in war — but Putin is willing to sacrifice innumerable human lives to try.
- What women do to survive and defend during war, in uniform and otherwise, is paramount. To be continued. But in Russia and Ukraine, women in combat is a contested idea and neither country mandates it.
- I don’t think he plans to survive loss. One eerie parallel with Hitler is that Putin also has a bunker. Enough said. Morbid thoughts.
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