Something has fundamentally changed about Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin spent years planting fake stories in the American media about the Russian military being fierce, even as he was depleting the Russian army (here’s looking at you, New York Times). This con worked for Putin for a long time. He convinced the world that the Russian military was a fierce fighting machine. Then Putin somehow forgot he’d depleted his military when he sent them to invade. He’s cognitively unraveling.

Putin is many things, all of them bad, but stupid has never been one of them. He’s always concocted his evil schemes such that if they work he wins big, and if they fail he still comes out okay. But depleting his military and then sending it to invade is an all time stupid move.

American media has been complicit in this, publishing numerous puff pieces about the Russian army, that it had to know (or should have known) were fake stories being pitched via the Kremlin. The media is all too eager to run with any story that’s scary enough to generate ratings.

But even with the media’s complicity, Putin’s false hype about the Russian military was only going to work in his favor as long as he didn’t actually have to use his military. And then he went and stupidly used it when he didn’t even have to – exposing how weak and broken it is.

The big picture here is that something has fundamentally changed about Putin of late. Either he’s become mentally incompetent enough to believe his own lies, or senile enough to forget they were lies, or something. And we don’t know what that “something” is.