THE BEARLESS WOODS:

Watching Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine play out, it seems the Russian president has vastly underestimated and misunderstood Ukrainians and their president.

Putin, a one-time KGB operative who in 2004 said "there is no such thing as a former KGB man," has made clear that he lives in a world of the past. The world that existed before the end of the Cold War, a world in which the territories of the former Soviet Union, potentially even the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, are run out of Moscow. A world he is trying to rebuild today.

But the USSR is not Russia, and when you live in the past, you lose touch with the present.

Putin has lost touch with ordinary Russians, despite exercising immense control over what they watch, listen to and read. But to an even greater degree, Putin has lost touch with what Ukrainians think.

It's the classic mistake of every tyrant: Surround yourself only with sycophants, suck-ups and yes-men, and you never get a reality check in your echo chamber. Eliminate dissenting politicians, and you assume that means you've eliminated dissent.

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