Russia's leader Vladimir Putin is trapped in a closed world of his own making, Western

spies believe. And that worries them.

For years they have sought to get inside Mr Putin's mind, to better understand his
intentions.
With Russian troops seemingly bogged down in Ukraine, the need to do so has
become all the more necessary as they try to work out how he will react under
pressure.
Understanding his state of mind will be vital to avoid escalating the crisis into even
more dangerous territory.
There has been speculation that Russia's leader was ill, but many analysts believe
he has actually become isolated and closed off to any alternative views.
His isolation has been evident in pictures of his meetings, such as when he met
President Emmanuel Macron, the pair at far ends of a long table. It was also evident
in Mr Putin's meeting with his own national security team on the eve of war.
Mr Putin's initial military plan looked like something devised by a KGB officer, one
Western intelligence official explains.
It had been created, they say, by a tight "conspiratorial cabal" with an emphasis on
secrecy. But the result was chaos. Russian military commanders were not ready and
some soldiers went over the border without knowing what they were doing.
Single decision maker
Western spies, through sources they will not discuss, knew more about those plans
than many inside Russia's leadership. But now they face a new challenge -
understanding what Russia's leader will do next. And that is not easy.
"The challenge of understanding the Kremlin's moves is that Putin is the single
decision-maker in Moscow," explains John Sipher, who formerly ran the CIA's Russia
operations. And even though his views are often made clear through public
statements, knowing how he will act on them is difficult intelligence challenge.
"It is extremely hard in a system as well protected as Russia to have good
intelligence on what's happening inside the head of the leader especially when so
many of his own people do not know what is going on," Sir John Sawers, a former
head of Britain's MI6, told the BBC.
Image caption,
Isolated - President Putin chairs a meeting in February 2022
Mr Putin, intelligence officials say, is isolated in a bubble of his own making, which
very little outside information penetrates, particularly any which might challenge what
he thinks.
"He is a victim of his own propaganda in the sense that he only listens to a certain
number of people and blocks out everything else. This gives him a strange view of
the world," says Adrian Furnham, a professor of psychology and co-author of a
forthcoming book The Psychology of Spies and Spying. The risk is what is called
"group think" in which everyone reinforces his view. "If he's a victim of group think we
need to know who the group is," says Prof Furnham.
The circle of those Mr Putin talks to has never been large but when it came to the
decision to invade Ukraine, it had narrowed to just a handful of people, Western
intelligence officials believe, all of those "true believers" who share Mr Putin's
mindset and obsessions.
 Who are the advisors in Vladimir Putin's tight inner circle?

De Russische leider zit gevangen in zijn eigen wereld. Jaren lang hebben ze
geprobeerd om in het hoofd te komen van Poetin om hem beter te begrijpen. Het is
nu juist het tijdstip om erachter te komen om dat nu ook zijn leger vastloopt in
Oekraïne. Het is noodzakelijk om het te weten zodat de situatie niet nog gevaarlijker
wordt. Het resultaat is chaos omdat het leger niet wist van zijn ideeën. Het is een
uitdaging om de bewegingen van het Kremlin te begrijpen. Het is ook moeilijk
vanwege dat het een super beschermd systeem is en dat het moeilijk is om
informatie te krijgen. Hij is het slachtoffer van zijn eigen propaganda omdat hij luistert
naar een aantal mensen en de rest blokkeert hij.