Suzanne Harrington: Putin reminds me of a James Bond villain - Vlad the Invader

These latest developments are worrying, aren’t they? Not accepting that he cannot have something that has declared independence; sending trucks to wait symbolically outside a place he is not welcome; claiming access to smaller entities with funny names; using his followers to threaten harm. But enough about Kanye West.

Unless your name starts with a K, and your kids’ names sound like Google Maps, Vlad the Invader is the one to worry about. Not to trivialise the stalking and harassment of any woman ever – in this case Kim Kardashian by her deluded and egomaniacal ex-husband - but right now the rest of us are probably a bit more concerned about the utter whatthefuckery of Vladimir Putin.

I’m writing this a few hours after Russian military invaded Ukraine – by the time you’re reading it, a whole weekend of Putin’s WTFery will have been rolled out. 

Why is he doing this? Have decades of absolute power, compounded by two years of isolating inside a virus-free bubble finally sent him over the edge, into the kind of paranoia we associate with 20th-century dictators like Hitler and Stalin? 

That boat-length white table where he met Macron, each sitting miles away at opposite ends – was that really about social distancing, or has Putin been watching too many Game of Thrones and Bond movies? Has he lost the plot? Or he is just massively playing us?

“I am a specialist in human relations,” he has said. Certainly, he is the political performance artist of our era, blank, inscrutable, ageless. (He’s almost 70, his face smooth as an ice rink). He is ranked eighth dan in judo – a black belt – which is all about honour, respect, humility. Like his UK counterpart, nobody quite knows how many children he has – definitely two, possibly three. He only ever presents himself as a single entity, wedded to Mother Russia, its modern-day Tsar.

All of this armchair psychology was all very well until the moment he actually sent the tanks in. I don’t know about you, but I had a jolly time idly googling ‘Putin psychological profile’ to see what came up beyond the usual KGB thug, kleptocrat, autocrat. All I could think about was that long white table. All he needed was a fluffy white cat to complete the picture.

British-American foreign affairs academic Fiona Hill suggests that Putin is a composite of six characters: statist, history man, survivalist, outsider, free marketeer, case officer. He was never one of the Moscow elite, until he was the elitist of all; he viewed the fall of Russia in the 90s as shameful, its restoration a matter of national honour; he has been stockpiling resources ever since, from animal feed to weaponry. Ironically his restoration of Russian pride and power has created an affluent middle class that would prefer European-style politics to nationalism and autocracy. And now he wants Ukraine back. How is this going to end?

Boris Johnson must be overjoyed that the spotlight on villainy has swerved dramatically eastwards.