Putin's Moves Leave World Wondering About 'Dangerous' Mindset

By Erin McClam

“He does like to act by surprise. But this one is more than just a surprise,” said Kimberly Marten, an expert on U.S.-Russian relations at Barnard College and Columbia University. “There’s something about this that doesn’t make sense.”

While the world scrambled to come up with a response and persuade the Russian president to pull back, academics were not the only ones left wondering what he was up to.

Secretary of State John Kerry called the incursion “stunning.”

And Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, went further after speaking to Putin over the weekend. She told President Barack Obama that he seemed to be “in another world,” perhaps out of touch with reality, The New York Times reported.

There are some things we know about the psychology of Putin: He cannot abide humiliation or chaos. He will not be lectured to. He relishes the chance to poke a finger in the eye of the United States. Informed by his own training in the KGB, he is all about rebuilding Russia as a world power not to be messed with.

In his mind, the Soviet Union collapsed a generation ago, and “the West has been dancing in the end zone ever since,” David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and the author of “Lenin’s Tomb,” about the Soviet disintegration, told MSNBC on Monday.

               
            

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