Has Russian President Vladimir Putin gone completely mad? This question is actually being debated in serious circles.
In a telephone conversation with President Obama a few months ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported to have suggested her Russian counterpart is “living in another world.”
Just last week, a leaked report commissioned by the U.S. Defense Department in 2008 concluded that the Russian leader may have Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of high-functioning autism. The report said it may account for his apparently high degree of control.
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The bigger problem, though, is that this may not end with Ukraine.
For Putin, this crisis is only the latest in a catalog of grievances, which includes the West trampling over Russia’s interests from Kosovo to Iraq, to Libya and Syria.
Putin’s ultimate goal may be to tear up the post-Soviet assumptions about what Russia will tolerate, and permanently change Russia’s relationship with the West.
