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It’s not a complicated question. It’s a very simple question with a simple answer: one man (Vladimir Putin) wanted to go to war and made the (initial and ongoin

It’s not a complicated question. It’s a very simple question with a simple answer: one man (Vladimir Putin) wanted to go to war and made the (initial and ongoing) decision despite it being a clearly terrible idea to anyone else watching. How Russia got itself to the point where one person has consolidated all authority, surrounded himself with corrupt sycophants, and cannot accurately gather or integrate information from the rest of the society is the complicated question here. It’s a pretty good demonstration for anyone watching around the world that unchecked power can lead to disastrous decisions. It should inspire us to stand up for democracy and against corruption and consolidation of wealth and power in our own societies. It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. My speculation is that involves some combination of (a) doing what he thinks will best maintain internal political control, (b) satisfying an egoistical urge for historical glory, and (c) a narcissistic belief that others must bow to his personal whims and a raging narcissistic grudge when they do not.

Maursault 4y ago
> It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; Entitlement. The closest you came was the descriptor "narcissistic" in (c). Narcissism is supposed to be a rare condition, but it is found everywhere. It is easiest to understand leaders like Putin, Jong-un, Xi, DeSantis and Trump, if framed in psychological terms like narcissism with symptoms of entitlement, grandiosity, attention seeking, arrogance, bullying, lack of empathy, and a fear of criticism.
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QuarterReptile 4y ago
>It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. Russia has no convenient geographic features to protect it from invasion, so it relies on long distances. Those distances are much shorter than they used to be, and Russian doctrine for at least the past decade has been focused on creating confusion and chaos in Eastern Europe. The chaos is here, and they probably misread the international community on what they could get away with. Now that they're in it, though, I think Putin is the biggest obstacle to Russia extricating themselves from the debacle.
herbst 4y ago
To my understanding blaming Putin personally is just a weird thing the media is doing to make Russia seem more crazy. Pretty sure in reality it's not one man alone doing crazy decisions without the whole state organ being behind him.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  There are a whole bunch of people in the “whole state organ” who were opposed to one extent or another. Some of them mysteriously fell out of windows or shot themselves in the back of the head. Others were fired or jailed. Others were publicly humiliated. The rest fell into line. Invading Ukraine certainly wasn’t, say, Elvira Nabiullina’s choice, or the choice of the oligarchs with homes in London or NYC. The turnover rate at the top ranks of the Russian military the past 6 months is higher than a typical McDonalds.

Maursault 4y ago

> It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; Entitlement. The closest you came was the descriptor "narcissistic" in (c). Narcissism is supposed to be a rare condition, but it is found everywhere. It is easiest to understand leaders like Putin, Jong-un, Xi, DeSantis and Trump, if framed in psychological terms like narcissism with symptoms of entitlement, grandiosity, attention seeking, arrogance, bullying, lack of empathy, and a fear of criticism.

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QuarterReptile 4y ago

>It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. Russia has no convenient geographic features to protect it from invasion, so it relies on long distances. Those distances are much shorter than they used to be, and Russian doctrine for at least the past decade has been focused on creating confusion and chaos in Eastern Europe. The chaos is here, and they probably misread the international community on what they could get away with. Now that they're in it, though, I think Putin is the biggest obstacle to Russia extricating themselves from the debacle.

herbst 4y ago

To my understanding blaming Putin personally is just a weird thing the media is doing to make Russia seem more crazy. Pretty sure in reality it's not one man alone doing crazy decisions without the whole state organ being behind him.

jacobolus 4y ago
There are a whole bunch of people in the “whole state organ” who were opposed to one extent or another. Some of them mysteriously fell out of windows or shot themselves in the back of the head. Others were fired or jailed. Others were publicly humiliated. The rest fell into line. Invading Ukraine certainly wasn’t, say, Elvira Nabiullina’s choice, or the choice of the oligarchs with homes in London or NYC. The turnover rate at the top ranks of the Russian military the past 6 months is higher than a typical McDonalds.