Vladimir Putin Has No Time for Your Reality
Isolated and surrounded by sycophants, the Russian president may have lost touch with the real world. That could spell disaster.
Deep in his alternate reality.
Photographer: Alexey Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images
So it has begun. Russian President Vladimir Putin, by recognizing two separatist regions of Ukraine as independent states and sending in Russian soldiers as “peacekeepers,” has made the overture for what could become war. What’s on the man’s mind? How does he see the world? Analysts and pundits everywhere have been wondering. The possibilities are frightening.
There was a time, in the early years of his reign, when Putin still surrounded himself with advisers and experts who gave him diverse views and interpretations of the world, a time when he spoke to foreign leaders and actually listened to them. By all appearances, he was in touch with reality.