So is he, along with the rest of the official Russian establishment, genuinely deluded or simply a brazen liar?
There has been much speculation about whether Putin himself is technically mad or just the latest in a historic line of murderous dictators whose actions are rational in their own terms.
But it is equally important to determine whether his agents at home and abroad are party to what must be either psychosis or pure evil. Are they, in other words, enthusiastically complicit with whatever this is - or just trapped in what has become too big a lie to unwind?
The West needs to make a working decision on this as a matter of urgency because it is the key to how the war must be handled. So far the political leadership on our side has decided that, for the moment at least, it is impossible to know the definitive answer. That is why the West's strategy for reacting to the crisis, for all its celebrated unity and vigorous resolve, lacks any sense of a clear ultimate objective.
What exactly are we aiming for here apart from an immediate end to the criminal invasion of a sovereign country? If the leaders of the western nations, who are so enthusiastically unanimous in their support for Ukraine, do not know what they are dealing with (lunatics or cold-blooded murderers?), how are they supposed to calibrate the effectiveness of their own moves?
Joe Biden has stated categorically that the US (and therefore Nato) cannot possibly risk any direct military confrontation with Russia, in a no-fly zone, for example, or even with the proposed provision of MIGs from Poland, because that would constitute starting World War Three with a country that has the largest nuclear arsenal on the face of the Earth.
While it might be hard to deny the sense and obvious conscientiousness of this observation, what was the point of stating it so unequivocally at precisely this point? Was the US president (who apparently said this spontaneously and without consultation, to a television interviewer) running on the assumption that Putin is so mentally unstable that he might press the nuclear button at any opportunity? Or was he betting that Putin is perfectly rational and would therefore be shamed in the eyes of the world by this display of moral responsibility from the West?
But given that the most powerful member of Nato has now said this, whatever his reasoning, where does it go from here? If the West wilfully renounces its military power in the face of outrages that (as Biden has said) constitute war crimes, then what use is that power?
The philosophy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent always rested on the principle that they could be used. If this threat is voluntarily surrendered at the outset of any conflict then their deterrence value evaporates. But more importantly, the existence of them in the hands of another country prevents (according to the Biden doctrine) even a conventional military response to its actions, however vile they are.
In other words, we are declaring ourselves helpless in the face of any onslaught from any nuclear power, and the fact that we also possess such weapons counts for nothing. We might as well go for unilateral nuclear disarmament and admit that we are at the mercy of any country that has such weapons: however immoral its actions are, we will never act against it. Lesson to the nations of the world: get and keep your own nuclear arsenal and you will become invulnerable.
But we are not completely helpless, you may say. We do have a quiver full of economic and cultural sanctions, which have been brought into the equation. The collapse in the value of the rouble to less than an American penny, the likely imminent default of Russia on its debt, the consignment of Russian bonds to junk status, the seizure of so much of the private wealth of Putin's associates and the loss of western consumer goods to ordinary Russians - surely these will make Russia's condition in the modern world untenable?
Not in the short term, they won't. Putin himself (and his personal wealth) will be untouched for the foreseeable future - and to a man who has anointed himself the guardian of the national soul, it is his own survival that matters. As for the rest of the damage, Russia has lived through such catastrophic times before.
When the Soviet Union was a global pariah, its people endured material hardships and a degree of cultural isolation that had become unthinkable in western Europe. It had a fictitious economy built on a valueless currency and a closed society that perpetuated an absurd myth of national triumph. Not so different from today. You think Putin can't get away with this for long? Stalin got away with it for 30 years. Of course, fashions change in the style of tyrannical rule. Putin's mass celebration of the seizing of Crimea last Friday - with a football stadium of cheering supporters - looked less like Hitler at Nuremberg than a Trump rally in Texas.
Meanwhile, the questions go on: should China be threatened or cajoled? Do we bargain with Putin or excoriate him? And the big one: what is the shape of the new world order and what role will the West play in it?
