Part of the problem is that we had grown accustomed to the caricature of Putin as a ruthless but calculated individual. He was seen as someone who might use sensationalist language but, when push came to shove, could be reasoned with.
Putin was seen as rational; a pragmatist.
When Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, Putin was receptive to Western calls for diplomacy and eventually de-escalated. Nicolas Sarkozy, then French president, won significant international praise for being able to insert himself as the honest broker of the conflict and secure a diplomatic solution.
Sarkozy was seen as being a successful mediator because not only did he have a strong personal relationship with Putin, his "man-to-man" negotiation style was something Putin respected and helped sway him into seeing the light.
Fast-forward to the present and the opposite seems glaringly the case now. Emmanuel Macron, the current French President, attempted to play the honest broker like his predecessor Sarkozy did 14 years earlier. But this time, Putin was unable to be swayed.
After a six-hour marathon meeting with Putin on February 7, Macron is said to have been struck with Putin's changed demeanour from previous interactions – and note that Macron has long been a vocal critic of the US' stance towards Russia. Reports of the meeting stated that "Putin gave him five hours of historical revisionism" and that he was unwilling to talk about the specifics of the current crisis.
More recently, Macron had seemingly secured Putin's participation in an eleventh-hour diplomatic summit on February 20, but this proved to be false optimism. And the rest is history.
Putin's actions are hard to rationalise. There are few benefits for him or Russia in attacking Ukraine like this. He is hurting his own country and causing the unnecessary slaughter of Russia's so-called Ukrainian brothers and sisters (not to mention Russian troops as well).
He seems to, now, truly believe the stories he has long told: that Ukraine is a Western-backed puppet state and that he and Russia are under attack from the US and its allies and that only a show of aggression can halt it.
How did he come to such a pessimistic and narrow view? Two immediate factors come to mind.
Firstly, since he was unconstitutionally returned as president in 2012, he has been increasingly invoking civilisational arguments to justify his actions – both at home and abroad. The analyst Nikolai Zlobin argued at the time "the first presidency can be said to have been about politics, and the second about the economy, then the third is about ideology. Putin 3.0 is the president of values". The ideology was that Russia is a great "Eurasian" civilisation that needed to be protected from external imperialist forces at all costs.
The problem with civilisational thinking is that much of its substance is based on imagined historical grandeur and grievances. The most potent narrative used by Putin revolved around an idea that the West, through the expansion of Nato and the European Union and through the policies of containment and regime promotion, is said to be aggressively antagonising Russia like what occurred during the Cold War. In this narrative, the US will stop at nothing until it humiliates and "Americanises" Russia.
Evoking history gives politicians immense power at first, but it also entraps them. Brexit is one example of this, but for Russia their use of history has gone further as it has clearly jumped from the domestic setting to the international.
Secondly, Putin has seemingly become extremely isolated. This isolation started with the Western response to the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of the Donbas region in 2014. He suffered significant international ignominy, such as being kicked out of the G8 and becoming something of an international pariah.
The famed Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński once remarked that the walls of the Kremlin, built so impressively high, are a "shield and a trap". They are a trap because, despite providing security to the ruler and key personnel, they also disconnect these people from the real world. In a way, the Russian style of leadership creates distortions and builds paranoias – something which has dogged so many of the Russian leaders that have taken office, from Lenin to Putin.
Adding to the already isolating circumstances has been the Covid-19 pandemic. As Russia has been hit by wave after wave of outbreaks, Putin has retreated from public view and chosen to hunker down (both figuratively and in practice). Notably, all of his "live" addresses, declarations, and meetings from the past week were all prerecorded – the declaration of war was, in fact, likely recorded on Monday. Putin now seems a man completely detached from reality with only the company of a few loyal "yes men" providing an echo chamber for his ideas.
These two factors – civilisational thinking and isolation – appear to have fused (and mutated), rendering Putin's current decision-making paranoid and delusional.
Given that he would not respond to Macron's tireless efforts to broker a deal suggests that there is currently no way to get through to him. Ukraine, sadly, will have to suffer the whims of an apparent madman.
• Nicholas Ross Smith, is adjunct fellow of the National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury
