Ukraine war: Western agents seek to get inside Putin’s head

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is trapped in a closed world of his own making, Western spies believe. And that worries them.

For years they have tried to get into Putin’s mind to better understand his intentions.

With Russian troops seemingly bogged down in Ukraine, the need to do so has become even more necessary as they try to figure out how he will react under pressure.

Understanding their state of mind will be vital to avoid escalating the crisis into even more dangerous territory.

There has been speculation that Russia’s leader was ill, but many analysts believe he has actually isolated himself and closed off any alternative viewpoints.

His isolation has been evident in footage of his meetings, such as when he met with President Emmanuel Macron. the couple at the ends of a long table. It was also evident in Putin’s meeting with his own national security team on the eve of the war.

Putin’s initial military plan looked like something dreamed up by a KGB officer, a Western intelligence official explains.

It had been created, they say, by a narrow “conspiratorial cabal” with an emphasis on secrecy. But the result was chaos. Russian military commanders were unprepared and some soldiers crossed the border without knowing what they were doing.

Western spies, through sources they will not discuss, knew more about those plans than many within Russia’s leadership. But now they face a new challenge: understanding what Russia’s leader will do next. And that is not easy.

“The challenge in understanding the Kremlin’s moves is that Putin is the sole decision-maker in Moscow,” explains John Sipher, who previously headed CIA operations in Russia. And while his views are often made clear through public statements, knowing how he will act on them is a difficult intelligence challenge.

“It is extremely difficult in a system as well protected as Russia to get good intelligence on what is going on inside the leader’s head, especially when so many of his own people don’t know what is going on,” said Sir John Sawers, a former chief. from British MI6, he told the BBC.

Putin, intelligence officials say, is isolated in a bubble of his own making, into which very little outside information penetrates, particularly any that might challenge what he thinks.

“He is a victim of his own propaganda in the sense that he only listens to a certain number of people and blocks everything else. This gives you a strange view of the world,” says Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology and co-author. author of a forthcoming book The Psychology of Spies and Spying. The risk is what is called “groupthink” in which each one reinforces her point of view. “If you are a victim of a group, I think we need to know who the group is,” says Professor Furnham.

The circle of people Putin talks to has never been large, but when the decision was made to invade Ukraine, it was reduced to just a handful of people, Western intelligence officials believe, all those “true believers” who share the Putin mentality. and obsessions.

The sense of how small his inner circle has become was emphasized when he publicly sworn in the head of his own Foreign Intelligence Service at the national security meeting just before the invasion, a move that appeared to humiliate the official. His speech hours after him also revealed a man angry and obsessed with Ukraine and the West.

Those who have watched him say the Russian leader is motivated by a desire to overcome Russia’s perceived humiliation in the 1990s coupled with a conviction that the West is determined to keep Russia in check and remove it from power. One person who knew Putin recalls his obsession with watching videos of Colonel Gaddafi’s assassination after he was ousted from power in 2011.

When CIA Director William Burns was asked to assess Putin’s state of mind, he said that he had “been cooked in a combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years” and described his views as having “hardened”. ” and that it was “much more isolated” from other points of view.

Is the Russian president crazy? That is a question that many in the West have been asking. But few experts find it useful. A psychologist with experience in the area said it was a mistake to assume that because we can’t understand a decision like invading Ukraine, we frame the person who made it as “crazy.”

The CIA has a team that conducts “leadership analysis” on foreign decision-makers, building on a tradition dating back to attempts to understand Hitler. They study backgrounds, relationships and health, based on secret intelligence.

Another source is the readings of those who have had direct contact, such as other leaders. In 2014, Angela Merkel reportedly told President Obama that Putin was living “in another world.” Meanwhile, President Macron, when he sat down with Putin recently, was reported to have found the Russian leader “more rigid, more isolated” compared to previous meetings.

Something changed? Some speculate, without much evidence, about possible health problems or the impact of the medication. Others point to psychological factors such as a sense that time is running out for him to fulfill what he sees as his destiny to protect Russia or restore it to greatness. The Russian leader has visibly isolated himself from others during the Covid pandemic and this may also have had a psychological impact.

“Putin is probably not mentally ill, nor has he changed, although he is in more of a hurry and probably more isolated in recent years,” says Ken Dekleva, a former US government doctor and diplomat. The George HW Bush Foundation for Foreign Relations between the United States and China.

But one concern now is that reliable information has yet to find its way into Putin’s closed circuit. His intelligence services may have been reluctant before the invasion to tell him anything he didn’t want to hear, offering optimistic estimates of what an invasion would look like and how Russian troops would be received before the war. And this week, a Western official said that Putin may not yet have the idea of ​​how poorly his own troops are doing that Western intelligence does. That raises concerns about how he might react when he is faced with a worsening situation in Russia.

Putin himself tells the story of how he chased a rat as a child. When he had cornered it, the rat reacted by attacking him, forcing a young Vladimir to become the one he ran away from. The question Western politicians are asking is what if Putin feels cornered now?

“The question really is whether or not it is being duplicated with greater brutality and scale in terms of the weapons systems that it is prepared to use,” a Western official said. There have been concerns that it could use chemical weapons or even a tactical nuclear weapon.

“The concern is that he’s doing something incredibly reckless by ruthlessly pushing the button,” says Adrian Furnham.

Putin himself can play on the feeling that he is dangerous or even irrational: this is a well-known tactic (often called the “crazy man” theory) in which someone with access to nuclear weapons tries to convince their adversary to back down. that he may well be crazy enough to use them despite the potential for them all to perish.

For Western spies and policymakers, understanding Putin’s current intentions and mindset could not be more important. Predicting his response is critical to determining how far you can push him without triggering a dangerous reaction.

“Putin’s self-concept doesn’t allow for failure or weakness. He despises those things,” says Ken Dekleva. “A cornered and weakened Putin is a more dangerous Putin. Sometimes it’s better to let the bear run out of the cage and back into the woods.”