What Drives Putin's Maniacal Destruction of Ukraine?

“It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

What would drive a man to order the complete destruction of city after city, town after town, and further threaten to make war on any nation that interferes with his plans? What would drive a man to kill thousands of people, destroy their homes, destroy their lives, destroy their being, utterly erase their history and any possibility of their future? What would drive a man to inflict deep suffering on millions more?

Would that man himself be aware of this inner propensity, something that perhaps Jung referred to as "the shadow," the unknown, dark side of one's personality?

It has been said that a number of the great entrepreneurs of our time have endured and overcome some sort of early trauma, sometimes called "the struggle," and channeled the experience into a positive outcome: a great company, a great product, a great service.

There is also the trauma of the narcissist, a person afflicted by this dark personality disorder that turns a perceived slight, it could be an unintentional mistake, a well-intended joke, or even a friendly comment—into a reaction in an instant of hot-tempered fury or a life-long simmer of perceived injustice. In this case, a misunderstanding by the narcissist can result in a channeling of an experience into a negative outcome: anger, indignation, lashing out or acting out.

Putin's Early Life

While Putin was born after the end of WWII (October 7, 1952), the youngest of three children (he had two brothers who died before his birth), I believe the inherent trauma of the war, "the Great Patriotic Struggle," cast its shadow and left its mark deep on his soul, or psyche, if you will.

We know one of Putin's brothers died during the 872-day Siege of Leningrad, which took the lives of one million Russians. Putin's maternal grandmother and uncles were also killed in the course of the war. Every day of the Second World War about 25,000 Russians were killed, a staggering number.

Putin grew up to be an only child of doting parents, who both had deeply experienced the great trauma of a long and and horrible war. A war in which many terrible things happened. Much is known, but much more will never be known of what the Russian people had to endure in their struggle against the NAZIs.

Growing up, Putin was known to be a scrapper, never backing down from a fight. He later went on to study martial arts, Russian Sambo, and later judo.

The Invasion of Ukraine

The accusation by Putin, on the eve of the invasion, that the Ukrainian government is full of neo-NAZIs is significant, no matter how far-fetched it seems. There can be no doubt, while the Second World War is fading away with the passing of most of the veterans and people who can intimately recall it, the war against the NAZIs left its indelible mark on Putin and his generation.

Like every good lie, it contains a grain of truth. It is true there are some people who identified as neo-NAZIs in the Ukraine, being a free country, such as the Azov Movement that spawned the Azov Battalion, based in the city of Mariupol. But this group is a tiny fraction of the population.

Mariupol, a once beautiful coastal city, is undergoing a complete leveling by Russian military forces. For the last week its citizens have been cut off from all utilities, including heat, water, and electricity. About 1,500 residents have died in the constant bombardments, and many more have been injured or are sick. Satellite imagery is chronicling the ongoing and complete destruction of Mariupol.

It seems apparent Putin has found his bugaboo in Ukraine, for not only Mariupol, but any and all Ukrainian cities within shelling range of Russian forces, from Melitopol to Dnipro in the south, to Kharkiv?to Kyiv in the north, are experiencing the same treatment.

Will Putin leave any Ukrainian cities standing until he exorcises the demons in his head? Is is too late for Ukraine? Will it stop at the Ukrainian border? Can it? ■