Vladimir Putin isn’t fooling anyone with this bizarre attempt at saving face

| 9:09 am EDT March 26, 2022
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Here’s the thing about Vladimir Putin. Any psychologically sound person in Putin’s shoes would understand by now that his attempt at taking over Ukraine is an utter failure that has backfired spectacularly. But because Putin is far removed from being psychologically sound, it’s difficult to figure out how he’s perceiving such things.

Take, for instance, the notion that once Putin figured out he’d lost, he might just try to take everyone down with him. The catch there is that a malignant narcissist like Putin may not be capable of understanding he’s lost. Instead he may be the type who, no matter how thoroughly he’s lost, merely rationalizes that he’s won – and steps back to try to make delusional plans for an imaginary future comeback (see also: Donald Trump).

This brings us to the Russian military’s announcement last night that – Surprise! – it wasn’t actually trying to take over Ukraine. Instead that whole thing about trying to take over all the major cities was just a head fake to distract everyone so that Russia could take over the Donbas region.

That’s right, Putin now wants us to believe that his plan all along was to get his military slaughtered across Ukraine, and his economy shattered, just so he could take over one limited region of Ukraine. This is, on its face, laughable. If it were true, it would make Putin the worst strategist in the history of, well, history. It can’t possibly be true, and is instead merely a ludicrous attempt at saving face. The general public isn’t going to buy into it, but at least he gets to tell himself that this wasn’t a devastating loss for him (see also: Donald Trump).

It’s not clear what happens now. Will what’s left of the Russian military actually pull back from attempting to invade major Ukrainian cities, and instead redirect its remaining firepower solely to Donbas? When it comes to an autocratic regime that it’s the midst of collapse due to the mental breakdown of its leader, the danger is that you don’t even know if the announcements being made are actually coming from that leader – and if they are, whether the rest of the regime will even follow along with that directive. This is the part where unraveling authoritarian leaders become particularly vulnerable to ouster.