MOSCOW — Has Vladimir Putin lost his mind? It’s the question on the lips of millions and has now been articulated by a leading American senator who has come close to suggesting that the Russian despot — dubbed “the old man in the bunker” by his main domestic rival, Alexei Navalny — is mentally unwell.
Marco Rubio, a former presidential candidate whose position as vice-chairman of the US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence gives him extensive access to secret information, cryptically tweeted: “I wish I could share more, but for now I can say it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with Putin.
“He has always been a killer, but his problem now is different and significant. It would be a mistake to assume this Putin would react the same way he would have five years ago.”
Rubio did not expand on his theory but seasoned Kremlin watchers say that the Russian leader has largely been a recluse for the past two years, retreating into paranoid exile from the world.
Ultra-strict measures to protect Putin from the coronavirus mean that the majority of his meetings take place either across absurdly long tables or by video link.
Moscow officials are obliged to provide fecal samples several times a week to ensure they do not infect Putin, and many of those who meet him face to face have to spend two weeks in self-isolation beforehand, reported the Baza Web site, which is understood to have sources in the security services.
“He has withdrawn into himself a lot during the past two years. He has become distanced from the bureaucratic machinery, from the establishment, from the elite. He spends a lot of time alone stewing in his own fears and thoughts,” said Tatiana Stanovaya of political analysis firm R.Politik. “He doesn’t ask for advice. He sets tasks and demands; they are implemented.”
Andrey Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank with close ties to the foreign ministry, revealed yesterday that he had not advised Russian officials to launch an invasion — and that the decision stunned officials.
“I would say that many in the foreign office were surprised and shocked and I would even say devastated to see what is happening,” he told the BBC.
“This is an important red line that was crossed by the Russian leadership.”
As his contact with the outside world narrows, Putin now relies on a hardline group of military, security and spy-service chiefs.
These were the men who were with Putin in 2014 when he made the decision to annex Crimea. They also, analysts say, reinforce Putin’s distorted views of Ukraine as a country ruled by “drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
One trusted lieutenant is Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian security council, who has known Putin since the 1970s, when they were both KGB officers. Patrushev views the West as a crucible of decadence and has claimed that some European countries are “legalizing marriage with animals.” Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, is another former KGB officer and a Soviet history expert. He often accuses opposition activists of working with Western intelligence services.
It is Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, who appears to have the closest relationship with Putin, though. The two go hiking together, and in 2019 they holidayed in Siberia for Putin’s birthday. A collector of ornamental swords, Shoigu, 66, oversees the work of the GRU military intelligence service, accused of trying to assassinate Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy, with Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018.
“Putin’s only contact with the world is through his inner circle. He can’t stand it if any of them have their own stance. For him, this would be a catastrophe,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin spin doctor, said.
Pavlovsky, dismissed by the Kremlin in 2011 for opposing Putin’s return to the presidency for a third term, said the Russian leader was today almost unrecognizable from the man he once advised.
“He was inclined then to discuss things with advisers and he was more open to alternative opinions,” he said. Describing the attack on Ukraine as “a very serious blow” to Russia’s own security, he added: “The previous Putin would not have done this. He was a very sane-thinking person. But this has all vanished now. He has an obsession about Ukraine that he didn’t previously have. He is reacting now to the pictures in his own head.”
Pavlovsky declined to say whether he thought Putin had lost his mind. “I’m not a doctor,” he said. Others, shocked by the sight of the Russian president’s hate-filled lectures about Ukraine on state television, have no such qualms. “Putin is insane and dangerous,” Leonid Volkov, an exiled ally of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, said on social media.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has shocked millions across Russia, from ordinary people to celebrities to members of the business and political elite. Riot police dispersed dozens of protests throughout the country Thursday evening, as people chanting “No War!” took to the streets in more than 50 towns and cities, from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk in eastern Siberia. About 1,800 people were arrested, according to the civil rights group OVD-Info.
The protests came despite a ruthless Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Over the past few years, Putin has locked up or forced into exile anyone with even the slightest chance of consolidating opposition to his long rule, from Navalny to a Siberian shaman who tried to lead a “people’s march on Moscow.” Independent media have been labeled “foreign agents”; anti-Kremlin activists have been jailed for innocuous social media posts.
Celebrities, including Maxim Galkin, a comedian married to Alla Pugacheva, a Soviet-era singer who is a household name, have expressed their outrage on social media. Ivan Urgant, who hosts state television’s token liberal talk show, urged Putin to call off his onslaught on Ukraine in an Instagram post. His Friday evening show was subsequently pulled due to “social-political events,” the Kremlin-run Channel One said.
Almost 600 teachers have signed an open letter against the war, and even Liza Peskova, the daughter of Putin’s spokesman, posted an anti-war message on social media before appearing to quickly delete it.
Yet amid the anger over the war, there is also approval and apathy.
State media has portrayed the conflict as a “special operation” that was aimed at saving the people of the breakaway republics from “genocide” at the hands of the Ukrainian army. It has not shown footage of attacks on Ukrainian cities. “This was a necessary measure. Russia doesn’t start wars, it finishes them,” said Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most prominent presenters on state television.
The Russian government’s media watchdog has also warned that any outlets that use “unofficial information” in their reports could be blocked.
Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London, believes that Western-imposed sanctions are not guaranteed to work.
“The only way sanctions will make things better for Ukraine is by sparking Russian elites and masses to seek leadership that is less eager to play games with their future,” he wrote on social media. “They may or may not succeed, but the US and the EU at this point have little choice but to try.”
Stanovaya, the political analyst, whose work has a particular focus on the Russian elite, does not expect a change of leadership soon.
“The elite is in shock. None of them were warned. They were all led to believe that there would be lengthy negotiations,” she said. “There are many people in the elite who are against this, but there is almost no one who is ready to challenge him. There can be and there will be no coup. Only senior figures in the military-security establishment could attempt a coup and they have received everything they wanted.”
From The Times of London.
