Russian President Vladimir Putin is trapped in a hermetic world of his own making, Western spies believe. And that is what has them worried.
For years they have tried to penetrate Putin’s mind, in order to better understand his intentions.
With Russian troops seemingly stuck in Ukraine, it has become more necessary than ever to try to figure out how it will react under pressure.
Understanding their state of mind will be vital to preventing the crisis from escalating to more dangerous levels.
It has been speculated that the Russian leader is ill, but many analysts believe that he has actually been isolated and blocks any alternative opinion.
The isolation has been evident in photos of his meetings, such as the one he had with French President Emmanuel Macron, when the two were sitting at the ends of a long table. That was also obvious in the meeting Putin had with his own national security team on the eve of the war.
Putin’s initial military plan looked like something conceived by a KGB agent, a Western intelligence official explains.
It was created, they say, by a closed group with an emphasis on secrecy. But the result was chaotic. Russian military commanders were not prepared and some of the soldiers were sent to the border without knowing what they were doing.
the only manager
Western spies, through unnamed sources, knew more about those plans than many within the Russian leadership circle. But now they face a new challenge: to understand what will be the next step for the president of Russia. And that is not easy.
“The challenge in understanding the Kremlin’s moves is that Putin is the only one in charge in Moscow,” explains John Sipher, the CIA’s former director of Russia operations. And while his views are often expressed in public statements, knowing how he will put them into action is a more complicated intelligence challenge.
“In a system as well-protected as Russia, it is extremely difficult to gather intelligence on what is going on inside a leader’s head, especially when his own people don’t know what is going on,” Sir John Sawers, former director, told the BBC. of the British intelligence service MI6.
Putin, intelligence officials say, is isolated in a bubble of his own creation, where very little outside information penetrates, particularly any that might contradict his thinking.
“He is a victim of his own propaganda, in the sense that he only listens to a certain number of people and turns a deaf ear to everything else. That gives him a very strange perspective on the world,” says Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology and co-author of the soon to be published book “The Psychology of Spies and Espionage.”
The risk is what is known as “group think” in which everyone reaffirms their point of view. “If he is a victim of groupthink, we need to know who is in that group,” says Professor Furnahm.
The circle Putin talks to has never been large, but by the time the decision to invade Ukraine was made, it had been reduced to a handful of people. Western intelligence officials believe it is all those “faithful believers” who share their mindset and obsessions.
The sense of how small his inner circle has become was made clear when he publicly berated the director of his own Foreign Intelligence Service during a national security meeting shortly before the invasion, an action that seemed to humiliate the official.
Putin’s speech a few hours later also revealed a man enraged and obsessed with Ukraine and the West.
Those who have watched him say the Russian leader is motivated by a desire to overcome Russia’s perceived humiliation in the 1990s, coupled with a conviction that the West is determined to repress Russia and remove it from power.
One person who met Putin recalls his obsession with watching videos showing the assassination of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi after he was ousted in 2011.
When CIA Director William Burns was asked to assess Putin’s state of mind, he said that “he has been cooking in a flammable combination of claims and ambition for many years” and indicated that his views have “hardened” and that it is “much more isolated” from other points of view.
Could it be that the president of Russia is crazy? That is a question that many in the West have asked. But few experts consider it a useful question.
A psychologist specializing in the matter said that the mistake was assuming that because we cannot understand a decision like the invasion of Ukraine, we classify the person who made it as “crazy”.
The CIA has a team that does “leadership analysis” of many foreign leaders, drawing on a tradition that dates back to attempts to understand Hitler. They study backgrounds, relationships, and health, drawing on secret intelligence.
Another source is the descriptions of those who have had direct contact, such as other leaders.
In 2014, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly mentioned to US President Barack Obama that Putin was living “in another world.”
For his part, when President Emmanuel Macron of France recently met with Putin, he was said to have found him “stiffer and more isolated” compared to previous meetings.
Did something change? Some speculate, without much evidence, of a possible health problem or the effect of a medication. Others point to psychological factors such as a sense that time is running out for him before he can fulfill what he sees as his destiny to protect Russia or restore it to greatness.
The Russian leader has visibly isolated himself from others during the covid pandemic and that may have had a psychological impact as well.
“Putin is probably not mentally ill, nor has he changed, although he is more rushed and probably more isolated than in recent years,” says Ken Dekleva, a former US government doctor and diplomat and now a fellow at the George HW Bush Foundation. for US-China Relations.
But the concern now is that the most reliable information has yet to penetrate Putin’s closed group.
Before the invasion, his intelligence services may have been reluctant to tell him anything he didn’t want to hear, giving him positive forecasts of how the invasion would unfold and how the Russian troops would be received.
This week, a Western official noted that Putin may not have the same perspective Western intelligence has on how badly things are going for Russian tops in Ukraine.
That is what raises concern about how he will react once he is faced with the reality that the situation for Russia is getting worse.
The crazy theory
Putin himself tells the story of when he chased a rat as a child. When he had cornered her, the rat reacted by attacking him, forcing young Vladimir to flee. The question leaders in the West are asking is, what if Putin feels cornered now?
“Really, the question is whether or not he will double down on more brutality and escalate (the situation) in terms of the weapons systems he is prepared to use,” a Western official said. There have been concerns that he could use chemical weapons and even a tactical nuclear weapon.
“The fear is that he will do something incredibly impulsive and aggressive, like push the button,” says Adrian Furnham.
Putin himself may be exaggerating the impression that he is dangerous and even irrational. That’s a well-known tactic (often called the “crazy” theory) in which someone with access to nuclear weapons tries to get his adversary to back down by convincing him that he might be crazy enough to use them despite the potential consequences for everyone.
For Western spies and leaders, understanding Putin’s intentions and current mindset could not be more important. Predicting his response is crucial in figuring out how far you can push him without triggering a dangerous reaction.
“Putin’s concept of himself does not allow failure or weakness. He hates this kind of thing,” says Ken Dekleva.
“A weak, cornered Putin is a more dangerous Putin. Sometimes it is better for the bear to escape from the cage and return to the forest.”
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-60818995, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-03-22 05:40:05
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