The Crazy Mystical Impulses Sending Putin Wild in Ukraine

If you suspect that Vladimir Putin’s decision-making process is above the creed of superstition and mythical creatures, you should know that there are psychologists, intelligence agency analysts and a jailed Yakutsk wizard out there who would beg to differ.

“Putin and his entourage take the spirit world very seriously,” says a Kremlin official who requested anonymity to ensure his security, navigating what some insiders maintain is the Russian president’s Twilight Zone. “It’s not a big leap of faith for a Russian to think Putin will do what’s necessary to destroy anyone looking to exorcize the imaginary demons who they believe give him power.”

The question is, do you believe that primal evil spirits, concocted to panic delusory serfs, have entranced the 70-year-old Putin into slaughtering Ukrainians and threatening nuclear war against the West?

Anna Moroz, who’s spent a decade counseling Russian emigres mystified about how to accustom themselves to the West’s secular ways, is about as certain of it as any clinical psychologist can be under the circumstances.

“Legendary stories play a formidable role in our national psychology and are without doubt animating Putin’s actions in Ukraine,” the Russian-born Moroz explains, speaking to The Daily Beast under an assumed name for fear of reprisals. “The technical term is paradoxical thinking, but I certainly don’t believe reports that the man-snake Koschei Bessmertny is advising Putin from a grotto beneath the Kremlin.”

Gulp.

Putin Isn’t Just Insane. It’s Far Worse Than That.

But let’s first get a grip on the current geopolitical reality before stepping into another dimension of sight and sound and mind—and Russia’s indigenous Voldemort, who was last spotted assisting Rus’ Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest capture Kyiv in 1203, according to the Tale of Igor’s Campaign.

Russia is a land of riddles Western leaders have spent centuries trying to untangle. The most pressing enigma right now is how to prevent an increasingly isolated Putin from triggering a nuclear holocaust while, at the same time, supplying Ukraine with all the weapons it needs to defeat him without further exacerbating the most vicious and devastating European conflict since World War II.

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“It’s like sitting here in 1942 trying to profile Hitler, who also believed in mumbo jumbo,” says a U.S. intelligence analyst…