Today we recorded an OODAcast with long time colleague Dr. Scott Shumate who has 33 years of national security experience with both the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover operations officer and the Department of Defense with the Counterintelligence Field Activity as a Senior Executive level director of Behavioral Science support to the departments investigative and counterintelligence units. We asked Scott to provide context around Vladimir Putin, his current mindset, and what behaviors we can expect to see in the future.

Here are the major takeaways from the interview to inform your perspective.

Putin has unimaginable wealth and power inside Russia. The one thing he doesn’t have is legacy and that is likely a primary driver for his actions in Ukraine.

Putin has no off-ramp, which makes this a very dangerous situation. An outcome that relies on his being humiliated is not likely to be considered as viable.

Putin has no guardrails to constrain his actions. Even amongst his own staff and advisors, he had created an environment of parroting and does not tolerate dissent. This contributes to how dangerous a global actor he has become.

Isolation due to Covid was likely not healthy for him psychologically and contributed to his actions.

He views the West and United States as weak and global events only contributed to that perspective. Events such as our internal arguments over Covid, the January 6th insurrection, botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and even Angela Merkel’s resignation.

Use of cyber power is likely a reasonable escalation pathway for Putin.

He will increasingly seek to demonstrate that Russia is a global nuclear power so expect additional acts of bravado that could include nuclear weapon tests.

Putin is a rational actor. He has a capacity to evaluate information and make decisions, but his decisions are subject to pre-established bias associated with the previous grandeur of the Soviet Union and his personal struggles when it collapsed.

Putin has a strong grasp on the value of propaganda and control over information, so he will continue to envelop his own citizens in a tightly controlled information sphere.

Putin is not suicidal and unlikely to engage in actions that lead to his own demise at this time.

Scott’s insights resonate with those of us who have watched Russia and their Putin-led actions closely and we believe these insights should help inform the strategic planning for government, private, and other non-governmental organizations. We are using these as inputs to our reporting both on the crisis in Ukraine and our geopolitical references to the Russia threat.

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