Call Me Ishmael

Try this. Ukraine is Putin's White Whale -- a mythic obsession borne of an entire career, an entire life, with a heart molded by some dynastic vision and a reflex forged by paranoia. With Russia as the Pequod and Ukraine as Ahab's lost leg, the harpooners straggle on deck to avenge an evil of Putin's own reckoning.

Such is one way to read this illuminating conversation with ex- Kommersant editor Alexander Gabuev about Putin's psychology and worldview (Putin In His Labyrinth). Putin's self-imposed isolation fed his broodiness, his obsession with Ukraine. Putin planned his war in secret, doubting his army. "If you tell any sane Russian military person that their mission is to bombard Kyiv to liberate it from Nazis, they'll know it's nuts, right?"

Much has been reported about Putin's profound miscalculations but at their center lies his fundamental confusion between a war with Ukraine and one with the West in Ukrainian lands i.e. "in Ukraine the West was clad in Polish dress." (NYT) Were he to recognize the distinction we can only hope it would not trigger "a scenario in which Russia detonates a low-yield nuclear weapon as an airburst over a Ukrainian mechanized brigade outside of Kyiv," the subject of a second piece (Would Russia Use A Tactical Nuclear Weapon In Ukraine?).

Then, of course, there is China back there strategizing how to best deal with this wild card, also the subject of that first piece.