@Hassletassle
He has survived from being a KGB man for 15 years to apparently a part time taxi driver, then rising up within ten years to become Yeltsin's designated successor. Ten years.
He has consolidated his grip on Russia and removed all effective opposition, and top Russian people are not a bunch of cute pussycats.
He has ensured that the resources of gas and oil are under the control of his people and not independent. A considerable part of this money has gone not to the country but to his oligarchs.
By buying people and by threats backed up with action he has ensured that people know that crossing him is a highly dangerous choice. He uses the weopons of threat, murder and humiliation expertly to increase fear.
His media control in his own country is very effective - hence why more than half of Russians believe the Ukranian 'special op' was justified, and that the West is an aggressor.
I personally believe that he was instrumental in getting Trump, who really isn't sane, into office and he also holds a web around him. I think that if Trump had been in office now, he'd have blustered but done nothing, because Putin has too much influence around him and if Trump had really stood up to him, Trump would have discovered his balls in a vice. Post Trump, the US is more divided than ever before as far as I am aware.
Given the years of media campaign undermining the EU, the mockery and resentment carefully created, and the Russian money that seems to have gone to the Brexit campaign plus the number of super-rich Russians who've bought into the UK, I personally think that Brexit was very much influenced by him.
The German chancellor before Merkel, Gerhardt Schroder, went from being Chancellor of Germany to working directly with and for the Russian gas company Gazprom, then Rozneft ... never mind his involvement with Nordstream. Days after leading Germany and being familiar with all the state secrets. Given the pattern of Putin's actions, it's hard to believe that something, somewhere doesn't smell like a rotten rat.
Putin's extended influence in Africa and Syria and established a closer and closer rapport with China, right up until the present day.
Up until the Ukraine, he was successful with his military operations, which always involved shelling civilian targets to smithereens (Grozny, Syria).
None of these are the actions of a madman, and they are all the actions of a highly competent and astute man who uses the pragmatic tools of power in a very clever way.
I think he's overstepped himself with the Ukraine because whether it survives or whether it is occupied, the West will never trust him again even if at some point trading starts up again. It always does.
But he is very good at what he does, and he's had a severely deleterious effect on the political and many financial institutions of Russia and on some outside Russia too. He's a very clever blight on anything he touches.
(its very late, sorry for any typos)