While I think it is possible of course that Putin has a paraprhenia , I think it is equally likely he has UDS. This is Uncontrolled Despot Syndrome, which manifests when people have had far too much power, for far too long, with no one challenging them.
Funnily enough I've just read this article in De Spiegel which pretty much explains this.
www.spiegel.de/international/world/ivan-krastev-on-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-putin-lives-in-historic-analogies-and-metaphors-a-1d043090-1111-4829-be90-c20fd5786288
"Putin Lives in Historic Analogies and Metaphors"
Political scientist Ivan Krastev is an astute observer of Vladimir Putin. In an interview, he speaks of the Russian president's isolation, his understanding of Russian history and how he has become a prisoner of his own rhetoric.
Krastev: If you’ve been in power for 20 years in an authoritarian state, nobody dares to contradict you anymore. You have established a system, you have become the system yourself, and you can’t imagine that the entire country doesn’t reflect that. You also can’t imagine there being anybody who could be an adequate successor. So, you have to solve all problems yourself for as long as you are alive. For Putin, Russia has long since ceased being a country in the standard sense; it is a kind of historic, 1,000-year-old body.
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He considered the fact that primarily women were responsible for Russia policy in the Obama administration to be an intentional attempt to humiliate him. The hypocrisy of the West has become an obsession of his, and it is reflected in everything the Russian government does. Did you know that in parts of his declaration on the annexation of Crimea, he took passages almost verbatim from the Kosovo declaration of independence, which was supported by the West? Or that the attack on Kyiv began with the destruction of the television tower just as NATO attacked the television tower in Belgrade in 1999?
DER SPIEGEL: Why does he do such things?
Krastev: Because he wants to teach us a lesson. Because he wants to tell us: I have learned from you. Even if that means doing exactly that for which he hates us. On that evening in Sochi, he expressed outrage that the annexation of the Crimea had been compared with Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. Putin lives in historic analogies and metaphors. Those who are enemies of eternal Russia must be Nazis. And so, he was quick to portray the conflicts in the Donbas as a genocide. Putin’s overstatements became so extreme that they no longer had any connection to reality. He has become hostage to his own rhetoric.
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In Putin’s view, Ukraine committed the greatest crime imaginable: It betrayed Russia.
DER SPIEGEL: In the spy novels of John le Carré, everything hinges on betrayal.
Krastev: It should also be mentioned that the Western media has contributed to creating a false image of Putin. First, they say that Putin is corrupt. That is true. But does it explain his politics? Putin has been the leader of a nuclear power for 20 years. He thinks in terms of history, betrayal and malice. For such a person, corruption is merely an instrument of power. Money may have been important to Putin when he was younger, but it isn’t any longer. Second, they say that Putin is a cynical gambler, a trickster. In 2011, Putin said that the protests against him had been organized by the American Embassy. Western analysts said that was propaganda, because he knew that wasn’t true. During that dinner, it became clear to me: He really believes it. In his understanding of history, things never happen spontaneously. If people demonstrate, he doesn’t ask: Why are they out on the streets? He asks: Who sent them? When we take him at his word, he won’t surprise us anymore. If you read his essay from July of last year, in which he wrote that Ukrainians and Russians are a single people and he would never accept an anti-Russian Ukraine, you find out exactly what his intentions are. And third, they say that Putin is somebody who is extremely strategic and tactical.
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Putin sees himself as the father of the Russian nation. Perhaps he is, perhaps he’s not, but one thing is clear: Putin unintentionally became the father of the Ukrainian nation. It was the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas that initially created a Ukrainian identity, one which is rooted in two principles: opposition to Russia, and opposition to Putin. Now, he finds himself in a situation that we know from Russian literature, when the father says to his son: I have created you, but now I must kill you. At the same time, Putin is destroying precisely that Russian identity that he is constantly talking about. In 2014, a large majority of Russians supported the annexation of Crimea.
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DER SPIEGEL: There are those photos of Putin sitting at an endlessly long table, far away from other meeting participants. A recent one showed him with advisers in the Kremlin at the beginning of the invasion. The photos certainly cannot be an accident, but what is Putin’s message?
Krastev: There appears to be a deep obsession with COVID in his circle. Plus, Putin has always been seen as someone who is far away from his advisers and from the political elite. There is a certain solitude surrounding him, one that is somehow reflective of Russia’s solitude. Which is why he’s not concerned about Russia’s isolation, since he, himself is alone. He also sees himself as the only one who really understands what is going on. I was shocked by that video showing him meeting with the Russian Security Council. All of these important figures who clearly didn’t know what was expected of them and felt uncomfortable because they of course knew that they could never show any dissent, even though some of them are likely concerned about the self-destructive path Russia is now on. And then there was Putin’s aggressive, humiliating dominance, openly demonstrating that he didn’t share their views and that he didn’t care at all about what they had to say.
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DER SPIEGEL: What narrative?
Krastev: That Russia is a victim. You can criticize the Ukrainian government and reject the West, but when you say that Zelenskyy is a Nazi, that’s not just absurd, it destroys the world’s post-World War II intellectual and moral foundation. One of the most important rules is that you’re not allowed to trivialize Nazism. And he also violated another important post-Cold War rule: Don’t talk about nuclear weapons. The weapons are there, they always have been. We know that Russia has them. We know that the U.S. has them. But in the last 30 years, politicians have agreed not to discuss them, much less threaten to use them. On the third day of the war, as the invasion was stumbling, that’s exactly what Putin started to do. And warning that Ukraine could acquire and use them. That is brutal, and it’s also a bit dumb: If you are hoping for appeasement from the West, you should present a story that people will believe. But there isn’t one.
DER SPIEGEL: Is Putin so isolated that he could simply push the nuclear button on his own?
Krastev: His isolation could lead him to do anything. On the other hand, the situation is so challenging that he could pursue Nixon’s madman strategy.
DER SPIEGEL: For a time during the Vietnam War, U.S. President Richard Nixon allegedly pursued a strategy of trying to seem so irrational and angry that he would even use nuclear weapons, all in an attempt to force North Vietnam to surrender. As we know, the tactic didn’t work. On the other hand, Nixon may well have been a bit off – depression, insomnia, alcohol.
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DER SPIEGEL: Analysts believe Putin is surprised that his plans didn’t work out as he thought they would.
Krastev: Because the Ukrainians are defending themselves and Zelenskyy stayed in Kyiv. Putin must realize that simply killing Zelenskyy won’t bring things to an end. Normal Ukrainians way out in the countryside are confronting Russian soldiers and shouting: Go back! What are you doing here? The soldiers don’t have answers. The sanctions will also have surprised him. Putin’s image of the West is something like a caricature. It’s as if the condition of the West reminds him of the final days of the Soviet Union. It happened to us, now it’s their turn. They are collapsing. Putin thought that Europe would try to dodge difficult decisions. The sanctions changed everything. They change the daily lives of the Russian middle class. They used to just be observers, but now they can feel the effects of Putin’s politics firsthand.
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Our world has changed. We used to be in a postwar world, now we are in a prewar world. That is the change, and it is taking place in people’s heads.
[RTB - my bold]
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Krastev: It is a situation like in the 19th century. Russia as a classic imperial power. And Ukraine in an anti-colonialist fight against it. And that is, of course, a romantic constellation. Again, if you follow the Russian narrative for the war, there are no Ukrainians because they are actually Russians, while the real enemies are the Nazis and the Americans. So there are only Russians and anti-Russians
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DER SPIEGEL: In your research, you have long focused on the relationship between politics and demography. Does that play a role here?
Krastev: Absolutely. Putin has a certain demographic fixation. Since the publication of his essay last summer, he has said on several occasions that had there been no revolution and had the Soviet Union not collapsed, Russia would today have a population of 500 million. He believes that Russia needs the men and women of Ukraine to survive in the new world. On top of that, the pandemic is thought to have caused 1 million deaths in Russia and the country’s birthrate has dropped. Russia is a vast territory that is continuing to depopulate. A large number of labor migrants, most of them from Central Asia, are arriving, to be sure, but the Slavic core of the country is shrinking, which is why Belarus and Ukraine offer the promise of a kind of demographic consolidation. It’s not about the territory of Ukraine, but about the Ukrainian people.
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DER SPIEGEL: Because it is easier to identify the enemy.
Krastev: This crisis has destroyed a couple of stereotypes. The Germans have slaughtered two sacred cows. Nord Stream 2 as a symbol of German mercantilism, and pacifism as a symbol of German moralism. Even stereotypes about Eastern Europe have disappeared. Suddenly, the unempathetic East is bending over backwards to take in refugees. And all that is happening because there is an identifiable enemy. The Polish government hasn’t suddenly become more democratic in the last two weeks, but it did realize that the true threat to its sovereignty isn’t coming from Brussels, but from Moscow
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DER SPIEGEL: We are betraying the freedom of opinion?
Krastev: Perhaps. Because of the pandemic and this war, the state again plays a larger role. In the pandemic, it was the welfare state that cared for its citizens and kept them alive. In this war, it is the security state that doesn’t just protect its citizens, but could also demand something from them: Namely, the readiness to make sacrifices. A friend of mine works at one of the biggest business schools. I told him: Everything you are teaching is useless. Just as useless as teaching socialism studies was in 1990. The world of globalization and free trade, in which the economy was only interested in bottom lines and not in politics, will be over. We don’t know what will happen in Russia after Putin, or in Europe, which currently finds itself in a romantic phase. But we shouldn’t make the same mistakes as in 1989. Back then, we thought the East would change dramatically, but not the West. Now, Russia is going to change dramatically. But so will we.
Its really worth reading in companionship with Kamil Galeev's analysis.
He also points to Nazi = anyone not Russian in the same sense as there is only Russian and Anti-Russian in Putins head.
He's also touched on the demographic issue (i believe that i saw one the other day about Russia being well on its way to being 50% Islamic) and how so many Russian soliders are ethnic minorities and how part of Putins problem with soliders is that the Russian of old simply had a massive excess of young men so it could afford for them to be dispensible. Thats simply no longer true. The army is looked down on. Those who get drafted are low status and viewed through the lens of dispensible.
He also talks about how theres is a soviet myth about how it was able to autarkic and self sufficient. And how its actually bullshit. But if Putin is stuck in all these historic narratives he probably believes it possible. That would mean he has to look torwards china and if China says no, he has an issue.
If this analysis is true - and I think its better than many which tend to look at things through the lens of the West, Putin isn't going to want to make peace. Cos its all or nothing about Russia’s very existance in his head. Every bit as much as its about Ukraines. If its about people and not land thats also deeply problematic.
I don't know if this is how Putin really is thinking. But i certainly don't buy into mad, crazy idea either. I think he is rational based on his own view of the world and he has radicalised in that paranoia of isolation. This doesn't fit with modern reality in any sense and this entire war is in this sense that utterly unravelling bit by bit, with every lie and corrupt issue suddenly amplifying and being unable to be hidden from the top anymore.
I really believe in the concept of material reality being the great barrier that ultimately can only ever be hidden for a period before it ensures a political collapse of an idea or ideology that has run away with itself unchallenged. Periods in history which value this and look to science and understanding are generally golden ages. Period which become mired in disinformation, corruption, extreme ideology and censorship aren't so great to live through. The Western problem here may well rest on Putin showing us this to prove a point - our hypocrisy and own increase in suppression of the truth doesn't help us much.