If Vladimir Putin was just a military pensioner playing dominoes and not the president of Russia, his inner world would be important only to his relatives, whom he would pester with his historical insights. But he is one of the most powerful people on Earth. He single-handedly, without any checks and balances, rules a huge country, commanding armies, and even nuclear weapons. What he thinks about the world and how he sees it is the most important determinant of what is happening on the planet.

People like him do not react to reality, but to their perception of it. If you, as the Bolsheviks did after seizing power, expect to be attacked, then you begin to prepare for war. Not only a defensive war, but also an aggressive one, which will inevitably break out in the end regardless of the true level of threat. Perception becomes reality.

Another of Putin’s tenets is that the West is trying to enact revenge for the defeats of Napoleon and Hitler. Apparently, that is why it supposedly attacked Russia on the territory of Ukraine. Hearing this may be laughable or frightening but it allows us to understand the picture of the world goes on in the mind of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces. The world he lives in and reacts to, including war, has some important characteristics that have nothing to do with reality.

It is a world that is frozen in time, and united in its inherent hatred of Russia. Anyone........

© The Moscow Times