Christopher Booth

It doesn’t matter if Putin is mad

(Photo: Getty)

Mike Tyson put it simply: ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’. And Vladimir Putin has just experienced a blistering one-two: fierce resistance on the battlefield, trashing his plans for blitzkrieg, followed by the rabbit punch of international sanctions that will soon rock the whole of Russian society.

‘Putinism’ is not an ideology that can command intellectual or spiritual loyalty if it doesn’t deliver. It is not an ‘ism’ like Marxism. It is simply a Mephistophelean deal with the Russian people: if I can have double-glazing and a half-decent smartphone, you can have yachts and palaces. That deal is now off the table.

People may not be taking to the streets, but that’s in part because they’re standing in queues at Ikea and Uniqlo to grab worldly goods before the shutters come down for a very long time. (We shouldn’t be smug: many of us would do exactly the same.)

A few brave souls have demonstrated and many of them were arrested. People may yet come out and demonstrate in greater numbers, since appeals to beardy Slav messianism will be a poor exchange for the catastrophic collapse in living standards that has begun. ‘The Iranian reality’, as one Russian economist put it to me, economically. Yet Putin, bloodied, persists.

Is he mad to do so? And what apocalyptic chain of events might he set in motion if he is indeed unhinged?

‘Putin’s yebanutii – fucked in the head’ said Boris Nemtsov eight years ago. He was the leading opposition politician of the day, and was also as it happens commenting on Ukrainian affairs. Specifically, the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

If Putin had not existed, modern Russia would have created him

He was shot dead less than a year later in full view of the Kremlin. Nemtsov’s blunt psychiatric assessment may have cost him his life: Putin is said to take umbrage.

By contrast, it costs journalists in the west nothing except virtual typewriter ribbon to speculate on the former KGB man’s state of mind.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in