Sure he does. The picture he had portrayed of him doesn't match reality. Just look at how scared he is of catching COVID. Since 2 years, almost no one is allo

Sure he does. The picture he had portrayed of him doesn't match reality. Just look at how scared he is of catching COVID. Since 2 years, almost no one is allowed near to him. The amount of COVID tests his bodyguards and others need to do daily is pretty insane too. Everyone he sees/greets needs to be in isolation for 2 weeks upfront to get near. https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-19-vladimir-putin-has-become-almost-invisible https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/10/02/thanks-to-covid-... And many other sources for many years. Here's a video from him in a hazmat suite, one of his last public appearances - https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-russia-admits-virus-numbers/story?id=69768452 https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-dons-hazmat-suit-... Fyi, sitting at a 20 meter table is not a public appearance and Putin has met his big/important friend Xi only virtually as far as I'm aware the last years. I don't think he's calculated at all. Many things have wrong that he didn't suspect: - Their 'advanced' malware was finished off by Microsoft within 3 hours - Their 'advanced hacking culture' has been reversed within days, state tv programs and websites have gone offline within hours. - Their decade long effort of a propaganda machine has been severely reduced within days ( RT, ...) - Their portrait of having an 'advanced military' has been decimated. The world now knows that his army is mostly old, rusty, unmotivated and his troops are clueless. - He miscalculated Ukraine, who he practically trained for 8 years. He also raised serious awareness under Ukrainians what happens with inaction. - He's giving up his independence, isolating himself from the world and it seems that he's fully aware of that. - He is constantly ( for years) angering his biggest and most profitable clients ( Europe). He overstepped his carefully crafted image and failed every step on the way. Not even taken into consideration that he literally had 8 years ( or more) to plan this. His image of being a world power ( while Russia has the same GDP as 30 years ago and America has grown 14 fold) is just an illusion, but real for him. We have given him too much attention on the world stage. He has nukes, not brains... Should have been known years ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679110 ). Europe is prioritizing energy independence now, Russia still had multiple decades to profit from that to improve their situation. Now, they became 100% China dependent.