"Ruthless, cold-hearted indifference," says Brock prof
“Vlad the Bad” is how he is portrayed by Western media, raining terror upon the brave citizens of Ukraine. American President Joe Biden has called him a “war criminal.” But many in and outside of Russia consider him a skilled politician and patriot.
Who is the real Vladimir Putin?
We are all creatures of the nature/nurture dichotomy, a product of our genetics and environment. Putin is no different. Many experts said it is a mistake to view Putin simply as an angry former KGB (Soviet security) operative, upset at the fall of the Soviet Union, and NATO’s encroachment after the Cold War.
Professor Michael Ashton, personality psychologist in the Psychology Department at Brock University, gave the Voice his assessment, based on interviews and news reports he has seen on television and read in the press.
Ashton was quick to point out that he is a psychologist, not a political analyst or military strategist.
According to various profiles, Putin came from humble origins. His father fought the Nazis during the Siege of Leningrad, and his family faced wartime starvation and bombing (ironically, the same conditions he is now imposing on Ukraine.) His family lived in a plebeian communal flat after World War II.
Putin studied law at university, followed by a 15-year career as a KGB foreign intelligence officer. He resigned, having attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, and commenced a political career in Saint Petersburg in 1991, rising through the ranks of government. He became president in 2000, after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin.
Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has experienced a shift to authoritarianism, though he still refers to the country as a democracy. Jailing and repression of political opponents, intimidation and suppression of the mass media, and a lack of open and fair elections are commonplace. Endemic corruption has made Putin and a broad circle of his oligarch pals fabulously wealthy.
“Putin’s background has certainly influenced his worldview, and his concern of the status of Russia today, in comparison to what the Soviet Union had been previously,” said Ashton. “This is a pretty psychopathic individual, quite cold-hearted and callous. We've seen his indifference toward civilian casualties in previous conflicts that Russia has been involved in, such as the Chechen War in the 1990s, when the city of Grozny was obliterated, and more recently in Syria, where the city of Aleppo has undergone similar treatment. This lack of concern for human suffering in order to achieve strategic goals seems to be one of his constant characteristics.”
This is a pretty psychopathic individual, quite cold-hearted and callous
Ashton noted that Putin has ordered the assassinations of journalists and political opponents, because they represent obstacles in his path. He has shown great intolerance towards protesters in his own country, thousands of whom have been arrested for having the courage to demonstrate against the Ukrainian invasion. Putin maintains that local protests are driven by fringe minorities and professional oppositionists, or by foreign funding.
“In a free society, we have the right to politically protest,” said Ashton. “In Russia, any act of political protest carries major negative consequences. One can be thrown in prison for years and given all kinds of terrible treatment, simply for expressing a contrary political point of view, or supporting basic human rights.”
At 69, reportedly with some health issues, Putin has allegedly accumulated—very probably illegitimately—billions of dollars in personal wealth, appropriated from the Russian people. Why he is not spending his golden years on his yacht in the Mediterranean is explained by many as a quest for absolute power, an ego run amok (which may explain his reputed friendship with like-minded Donald Trump.)
“It's hard for me to speculate, but in terms of the general situation, Putin has been regarded as a pretty prudent risk taker, not unlike a poker player who carefully assesses the pros and cons of a situation,” said Ashton. “I think what has been surprising about the invasion of Ukraine is that it seems to have been quite a reckless thing to do. Military experts have suggested he would need half a million men, with much better planning and logistics, to be able to have a hope of occupying Ukraine, and yet Putin went ahead with under 200,000 soldiers. Some wonder whether he has lost the ability to do careful calculation. It’s difficult to anticipate what he would do, faced with escalating scenarios.”
American President Richard Nixon coined the phrase “peace with honor” when America extricated itself from the Vietnam War. A face-saving exercise, essentially. Ashton says Putin will require the same. The price of peace could be that Ukraine formally gives up Crimea (already annexed by Putin in 2014) along with the two eastern provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russia recognized as independent states in February of 2022.
“He would want to have something to wave around to be able to say that he made tangible achievements, both to the Russian people, and the rest of the world.”
Ruthless, cold-hearted indifference is Putin’s modus operandi, according to Ashton.
He would want to have something to wave around to be able to say that he made tangible achievements, both to the Russian people, and the rest of the world
“He’s interested in preserving his own power, and also the Russian state, which he currently identifies with. He’s not concerned with refugee well-being or reducing human suffering. That just doesn't come into the picture at all.”
Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, is a 2015 book written by Russian experts Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy.
They consider Putin to be a master manipulator and extortionist, deploying blackmail against opponents, allies, and foreign leaders.
“As he can fully trust only himself,” Hill and Gaddy write, “Putin applies extortionary methods to everyone else — basically mutually assured incrimination to ensure loyalty.”
Hill and Gaddy consider Putin to be a pragmatic outsider, with no vested interests in policies or ideologies.
“Putin regards Russia’s post-Soviet stumbles of the 1990s as an unforgivable humiliation he must avenge. He pledged to rebuild the Russian state, protect Russia’s sovereignty, preserve domestic stability and unity, and ensure national security,” write Hill and Gaddy. “Capitalism, in Putin’s understanding, is not production, management, and marketing. It is wheeling and dealing. It is not about workers and customers. It is about personal connections with regulators. It is finding and using loopholes in the law.”
Given his successful career as KGB case officer, Hill and Gaddy note that Putin is “skilled in studying the mind of the targets, finding their vulnerabilities, and figuring out how to use them. This is how he has managed Russia’s oligarchs, using their wealth — and their desire for more — against them.”
The authors profess that Putin does not have a good sense of Western values, and finds the United States in particular to be something of an abstraction.
“He knows few Americans, and those he knows, such as George W. Bush and Obama, he does not like. Putin views the United States through the insult of NATO expansion, the shame of the Kosovo intervention [in which U.S.-led NATO air strikes forced Russian-supported Yugoslav forces from the country], and the insidious support for pro-democracy nongovernmental organizations that only undercut Russian unity.”
Hill and Gaddy add that Putin is driven by a delusional view that Ukraine is not, and can never be, a separate country, and never had a tradition of independent statehood. His revisionist view is that modern Ukraine is a creation solely of Mother Russia.
One thing is incontestable: Vladimir Putin has evolved into the greatest threat to European and global security in decades, and with 8,000 nuclear weapons under his thumb, there are huge risks in not understanding who Putin is.
In a recent column, veteran political analyst and international journalist Diane Francis noted, “As his brutality increases, people want to know if Putin is a megalomaniac, a ruthless but rational actor, or a crazy thug with a death wish.”
She quoted Russian author and journalist Masha Gessen, who has first-hand experience of Putin, writing a biography of the man in 2014 called, A Man Without a Face.
“He has decided that the Russian Empire was the legitimate entity in the Soviet Union,” writes Gessen. “And then Lenin comes along, takes this empire, chops it up into a bunch of pieces, and says each of these is a state [like Ukraine, for instance]. Putin says all of that was completely false. Putin seeks a new World Order, with Russia in control. He’s deeply religious but murders without remorse. And he has crushed all Russian media and opposition and — please do not delude yourself — he has the full backing of the Russian people.”
