Ian Robertson and David Owen
\nSaturday February 26 2022, 6.00pm,<\/p>\n
The Sunday Times<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Global politics<\/strong><\/span> Putin\u2019s out-of-control behaviour, however, goes far beyond the impulses of his The only way of constraining such efects on a leader\u2019s brain is through the One of us (Owen) encountered Putin during his state visit in 2003 to the UK at At the time Owen was the chairman of Yukos International, a division of the Putin took his time and initially it seemed he was open to criticism and even What we see today is a further deterioration in Putin\u2019s character and judgment But power is as potent a brain-changer as any drug and Putin is in a dangerous But Putin now has under his total control armed forces better equipped than The only antidote for contempt is strength and the democratic world must be But there is one consolation we can take from Greek mythology. The hubris- the writers of this article are SOURCE:https:\/\/www.lorddavidowen.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/inside-putins-mind-absolute-power-has-blinded-russias-new-tsar-q8gws3v5j.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ian Robertson and David Owen Saturday February 26 2022, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times Global politics In June 2005, during a US business delegation visit to St Petersburg, President Putin noticed a diamond Super Bowl ring that Robert Kraft, owner of New England Patriots football team, was wearing. He asked to see it, tried it on, … <\/p>\n
\nIn June 2005, during a US business delegation visit to St Petersburg, President
\nPutin noticed a diamond Super Bowl ring that Robert Kraft, owner of New
\nEngland Patriots football team, was wearing. He asked to see it, tried it on, and
\nsaid: \u201cI could kill someone with this.\u201d He then, allegedly, put it in his pocket and
\nabruptly left the room.
\nThree months later, while visiting the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the
\ncurators took an exhibition piece \u2014 a glass replica of a Kalashnikov gun filled
\nwith vodka \u2014 from a display case. According to his biographer, Masha Gessen,
\nPutin nodded to one of his guards, who simply reached over and pocketed the
\npiece.
\nSuch minor thievery pales into insignificance in comparison with the use of
\nradioactive and chemical weapons on UK soil to cause as painful a death as
\npossible to perceived betrayers such as Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal,
\nnot to mention unleashing an unprovoked war in Europe.
\nPutin is a self-described thug who, according to one biographer, took pleasure in
\ndescribing the street fights of his youth and emphasising his aggression,
\nvengefulness and diUculty controlling his temper. This core personality found a
\ncongenial home in the KGB serving his beloved Soviet empire.
\nIts collapse in 1989 was an intensely emotional and painful humiliation for him
\nand Putin has replaced the emotional security that the KGB and the Soviet
\nempire gave him with the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2016 he unveiled a
\nstatue to St Vladimir, a 10th-century founding saint of Russia. The Roman
\nemperor Julius Caesar made himself a demigod and had statues of himself
\nraised while still alive.<\/p>\n
\ncore personality. One of us (Owen) has defined the diagnostic criteria for a gross
\npersonality distortion caused by extreme power called the hubris syndrome. Its
\nfeatures include narcissism, grandiosity, a conflation of personal interests with
\nthose of the nation, impaired judgment, diminished risk awareness and
\nwidespread contempt for others.
\nPutin\u2019s contempt, even for his closest advisers, was on display at a meeting with
\nhis security council in St Ekaterina\u2019s Hall in the Kremlin on Monday. When his
\nforeign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, said that he \u201cwill support\u201d
\nrecognition of the separatist regions in Ukraine, Putin barked: \u201cWill support or
\ndo support. Tell me straight?\u201d More like the headmaster harrying a group of
\nschoolboys.
\nAnyone around the world watching these scenes would conclude that Putin
\nbrooks no discussion, let alone disagreement. He is now, by any rational use of
\nthe word, a dictator.
\nAbsolute power changes the human brain completely but it is the delusional
\ncertainty in the rightness of one\u2019s own views and the consequent blindness to
\nrisk that makes it so dangerous in a world leader.<\/p>\n
\nconstraints of democracy, which have been painfully invented over centuries to
\nstop brain-distorted leaders taking their people into conflict and chaos.
\nPutin has systematically destroyed all the checks and balances that used to exist
\nin Russia, even under his beloved communist rule. Collective decision-making
\nhas been abandoned. The politburo that functioned as a collective following
\nStalin\u2019s death in 1953 has gone; the duma, as a check on Putin\u2019s power, gone.
\nPresident Xi of China has more limitations on his personal power than Putin.
\nThere is no properly independent judiciary and scarcely any free press. But it
\nhas taken him time systematically to degrade these antidotes to his power
\naddiction.<\/p>\n
\nthe state banquet and after that at a meeting hosted by BP, which was increasing
\nits investment in Russia with Putin\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n
\nformer Russian petroleum company Yukos. It was a time still of great hope for
\nthe Russian Federation economically and politically and before Mikhail
\nKhodorkovsky, the chairman of Yukos, was arrested on Putin\u2019s orders and
\nimprisoned for ten years.<\/p>\n
\nafter two terms stepped back in favour of Dmitry Medvedev being president,
\nsomething that would be inconceivable now, such are the changes wreaked in
\nhis brain by too much power.<\/p>\n
\nafter his two years of extraordinary isolation caused by his fear of catching
\nCovid. This fear may be genuine if, for example, his immune response is
\nweakened. The changing contours of Putin\u2019s face resemble that of a man on high
\ndosages of steroids, which can reduce immunity. Perhaps that is a better
\nexplanation than the more frequent suggestions of failed plastic surgery or
\nBotox injections.<\/p>\n
\nmental state because of this. His religiosity and sense of spiritual mission,
\ncombined with his blunted risk perception and contempt for any adviser who
\nmight contradict or warn him, means that he cannot be considered a fully
\nrational actor, as anyone watching his rambling and emotional speech on
\nMonday could see.<\/p>\n
\nRussia has had since the declining years of Leonid Brezhnev\u2019s rule. The Russian
\narmed forces have a new confidence with their new equipment.<\/p>\n
\nstrong or it will be crushed.<\/p>\n
\ninflamed Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell. And in Roman times, having
\nmade himself a demigod, Julius Caesar came across Brutus. President Putin may
\nbe full of anger and contempt \u2014 but he is also haunted by fear.<\/p>\n
\nIan Robertson is emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin and<\/strong>
\nthe author of How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief (Penguin,<\/strong>
\n2021). Lord Owen is a neurologist and was foreign secretary from 1977-79. He is<\/strong>
\nthe author of Riddle, Mystery, Enigma: Two Hundred Years of British-Russian<\/strong>
\nRelations (2021)<\/strong><\/p>\n