Who is Vladimir Putin?

Who is Vladimir Putin? These days the answer to this question directly affects lives and deaths of thousands, potentially millions of people. Not in the sense of figuring out whether he is a “ruthless dictator, oppressing his own people, and aiming to dictate his terms to the rest of the world”, or a “determined and strong world leader fighting for legitimate place for his country under the sun”, or anything in-between, really... But rather who is Vladimir Putin as a person? What drives and motivates him? What scares and upsets him? And, most importantly, how all of that affects what he is going to do next?

In my work I often help decision-makers to answer precisely these kind of questions about people they have to deal with: business leaders, MPs, politicians, ministers. The bulk of what follows was written long before anyone could have imagined what has happened over the past few days. I only added a few points at the end, that are particularly relevant for the current situation.

So, who, after all, is Vladimir Putin?

Lack of confidence

?You would not believe me, yet it is true:?people, similar to Vladimir Putin, severely lack confidence.

?Not because anything particularly bad happened in their childhood, or because they lacked something, were bullied or affected in any other way by external circumstances. They were basically born like that. With everything that it entails: constantly doubting themselves, thinking they are “not good enough”, constant desire to be recognised and loved, always trying to prove their “worth” to themselves and others...

?This is a very hard life, when anything – a word, a look, a gesture -?can instantly hurt your sense of self-confidence. People like Vladimir Putin desperately “want to be loved”, but, at the same time, do not dare to believe anyone who tells them “I love you”. Trying to avoid this self-inflicted pain, they will tend to rely on themselves, avoiding, as much as possible, any interaction with others. When they are young, such children might appear to be very “strong” and “independent” (“Don’t help me, I will do it myself!”), while what they are really doing is desperately trying to avoid being hurt. When these children grow up, many are often perceived as being “cold”, “emotionally distant”, “un-involved”, “uncaring” and generally uncapable to love anyone. Nothing is probably further from the truth, but nobody knows it. Moreover, treating them accordingly (who wants to play with a “cold, distant and uninvolved” playmate?) only reinforces their doubts about their own self-worth, distrust of others, creating multiple negative-feedback loops of “self-fulfilling prophecies”.

?Living in a bunker

?To protect themselves, most of those like Vladimir Putin tend to develop – usually from early childhood – a highly elaborated multi-layered system of psychological “defences”, invisible “walls”, each next one higher and thicker than the previous one... If not dealt with in time (and hardly any parent and most psychologists is even aware of what’s going on), sooner or later such people end up living in an invisible “castle”, perceiving the world around and interacting with it through so many barriers, that any “signals” they occasionally do get from “outside” are completely distorted.

?But rather than making them feel “safer”, this makes their constant suffering even worse. Completely misreading any signals coming from outside, they risk misinterpreting any communication, any image, any word. They literally live in a sort of an impenetrable “bunker”, with colour-glass sound-proof walls, where any image and any sound coming from outside is completely distorted. And it only gets worse: they quickly start responding to the outside world based not on what is really “out there”, but based on what they can see and hear from inside their bunker. That’s when it can get really scary.

“Control” and “fight”

Two key words could summarise the way that people, similar to Vladimir Putin, relate to and interact with the outside world: “Control” and “Fight”.

To deal with their fundamental insecurities they would always try to tightly control and “manage” their own environment. Everything should be “checked”, everything should be at “its place”, tightly fitting into whatever mental image of reality, that people like Vladimir Putin created in their own heads (and, as you saw before, that image is usually very-very far from any objective reality). People and countries should “play the roles”, assigned to them in that person’s head. And when they don’t? Well, too bad for them. The reality has to change. But how?

And this is where the second key word comes into play. When the reality does not “conform”, people like Vladimir Putin will “fight” it until it does (and “flight” is usually not an option). When they are still young, that “fight” response can take many forms, from outright aggression against playmates, to screaming and shouting, usually blaming everyone and everything else (never oneself) for one’s real or perceived “misfortunes”. When hurting others physically and/or emotionally is not possible (and most schools and kindergartens will not allow it) they can go sometimes as far as hurting themselves to various degrees. Unfortunately, when these children grow older, the space for “responding to the world around” with an outright aggression diminishes dramatically, while their “grudges” against it only increase (on top of that, they have an “elephant memory”, holding these grudges forever). And, unless they end up in the jobs where they could legally exercise some degree of violence (e.g. army, police, security), their lives could be miserable indeed.

“Collapsing tower”

We are all afraid of something. As you saw before, people like Vladimir Putin are usually uncomfortable with the world “as they see it”. They would not like it when they cannot “fight back”. They would always be very scared to “lose control”. But the biggest scare for them is a sudden and unforeseen collapse of their “universe”. Seeing everything that they have been patiently “building” for years (be it families, businesses, relations, societies, countries, ideologies) suddenly collapsing under the “strike” of an unexpected force that simply cannot be controlled. As if suddenly a strong and solid “tower” (remember the earlier “castle” analogy?) that these people have been building for decades, believing that it guaranteed them “they-lived-happily-ever-after” happy end, is suddenly stricken by a powerful “lightning”, destroying all of it in a matter of minutes. No more safety, no more “control”, no one to “fight” with...

?That was the end point of the article I wrote?some time ago. What follows are a few comments related to what is going on right now, in March 2022.

“Houston, we have a problem...”

You would have probably realised by now, that, using the famous phrase from Apollo 13 movie, “Houston, we have a problem...”. Someone, whose psyche works as described above, will be severely affected by the current situation. And he is.

Looking from his own mental “bunker” Vladimir Putin – who kept completely misreading all the signals he was getting for years - feels hurt and betrayed. Betrayed by Ukrainians, who failed to “welcome” his mental image of a re-united Soviet Union. Betrayed by his own political and military advisors, who kept promising his tanks a triumphant “Sunday afternoon walk” to Kiev. Betrayed by the Russian military who failed to achieve their objectives “with little blood and on the enemy territory” (using the slogan from Stalin’s pre-WWII propaganda). Betrayed by the “treacherous” EU and NATO, who dared to disagree with his vision of the “new old" world, divided once again along the lines drawn at Yalta conference of February 1945. So, in the current situation anyone like Vladimir Putin would feel extremely lonely, threatened, stressed and scared. Not being able to trust anyone anymore, having lost all control, and seeing the “ivory tower” of “almighty mother Russia” he has been building for the past 20 years, crumbling and collapsing in front of his eyes.

In situations like that, the only way people like Vladimir Putin can calm themselves down is to “fight”. ?Worse, when “cornered” and feeling “betrayed by everyone”, the only thing they tend to focus on is revenge. When it happens, any “self-preservation” becomes largely irrelevant. On top of that, for Vladimir Putin personally 2022 is very much the year of “letting go”. While it could, in theory, make it easier for him to “let go” of his extremely distorted worldview that largely led to the current crisis, it is, unfortunately, more likely that it would push him towards “letting go” of everything and everyone else. And there are 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine. Remember Chernobyl?

What now?

In the current situation, with all “red buttons” pushed to the extreme, there is hardly any room for a “rational” discussion with people like Vladimir Putin. No politician, no military leader, no head of state will be able to find the right words for him right now. But whoever talks to him, will be talking to the person that I described above. With anything it entails.

This time the world might need an experienced hostage negotiator.

Or a good psychiatrist.

The “sweet poison” of autocracy

Assuming that humanity manages to survive this crisis (and at this point in time anything is possible), there is one major lesson to be learned.

In 2020-2022 many world leaders amply tasted the “sweet poison” of autocracy. Let us not be na?ve: many liked it, some really enjoyed it. And it is precisely the response of most Western nations to Covid-19 pandemic, that apparently convinced Vladimir Putin that all the major “world powers” dropped the ideals of liberal democracy, and started rapidly “converging” towards some form of “autocracy”, much like his own in Russia. And one “autocrat” would certainly understand another. It’s all about “interests”, isn’t?it? So, anything should be possible in this “brave new world”...

If nothing else, Ukrainian crisis has clearly showed what happens when an autocracy (any autocracy!) is left “unchecked”. And, while for Vladimir Putin 2022 is the year of "letting go", for the rest of the world 2022 is the year of “choice”.

Hopefully, the world will make the right one.