Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, once described Vladimir Putin as living in a “parallel universe”. Amid the crisis that grips his nation, this is how that alternative reality may look through the Russian president’s eyes.
First, those who tell him to liberalise for the sake of the nation, or even his presidency, will go unheeded. Likewise those who counsel him to quit Ukraine. Neither relaxation of control nor retreat has ever been a Putin trait. It is more likely he will stay the course. To do otherwise would signal weakness.
To outsiders he looked isolated at November’s summit of the Group of 20 leading economies; the Russian leader himself probably wonders which of his peers has done better since he took power 15 years ago.
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