As the story is well known by now, Putin had been a low-level KGB operative in East Germany when the collapse of the regime, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the mass movement of people crossing the formerly forbidden border between East and West Berlin made a deep, bitter impression. As East Germany vanished into history, Putin and his family returned to the Soviet Union in their second-hand car, bringing kitchen appliances and other sad accoutrements of a would-be middle-class life.

Soon enough, though, he landed on his feet. After his return to the Soviet Union, he found a niche in the civic administration of Leningrad (before the city was rechristened as St Petersburg again).

When Boris Yeltsin became leader of the Soviet Union, Putin came along as the kind of man who could make things happen, a bureaucratic fixer, an especially valuable commodity in the increasingly chaotic Yeltsin regime. Over time, he manoeuvred himself into becoming president of the new Russian state.

Despite the new opportunities of a Russia reborn as a 21st-century version of the Wild West, hitched to a swarm of apparatchiks who became robber barons and then oligarchs as vast state enterprises were privatised, Putin never quite relinquished his anger over the break-up of the old Soviet Union and its system of Eastern European satellites.

Emblematic of that, he has often been quoted about his belief that those events had been the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

Putin, of course, drew his inspirations for a future Russia from the writings of romantic nationalists that largely reached back to ideas and myths from before the Soviet era. This gave impetus to his views about a future in which Russia would again be the great empire of its czarist times, able to rid itself of all those Western corruptions that had crept into the nation with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

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Of course, this new Russia that Putin was hoping to create was also a land where the oligarchs of industry were totally beholden to him for their positions, wealth, holdings and status.

And by many accounts, these hierarchical relationships also allowed Putin to accumulate a very large fortune of his own.

Along the way, any febrile embrace by Putin of democratic values such as media freedom, the rule of law and respect for the role of a political opposition shrivelled away, and political opposition figures either ended up deceased or incarcerated.

This baleful evolution in government occurred even as various Western leaders had said Putin was a man they could do business with on global issues.

Eventually, Putin moved to stay in charge for term after term of office (with a short detour when the constitution prohibited a successive third term and his previous subservient deputy was placed in the top position for a term). By now, Putin has been in charge of his country for far longer than the heads of government of any other major nation.

Mystical views and war

But 2022 has also proved to be the nadir of his political and governmental evolution. Drawing on his mystical views about the nature of Ukraine as an inseparable part of greater Russia, as well as his view that the West was bent on the destruction of his nation, Putin determined that an invasion – something he christened a “special military operation” – was needed.

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This was put in motion after placing nearly 200,000 troops in a threatening semicircle around Ukraine. His military was given the go-ahead to invade after it became clear that the Ukrainian government would not accept Russian overlordship in the manner of the supine Belarus.

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But one must be careful about what one wishes for. Despite the imbalance in the size of the two militaries, the Russian army – poorly led, badly supplied and its strategy ineffectually planned – proved incapable of conquering its neighbour.

Much of Putin’s military, a force that had previously mesmerised Western nations, has been destroyed or incapacitated, including embarrassing, costly retreats on three fronts. In the absence of battlefield success, the Russian strategy has fallen back on carrying out a massive bombardment of rockets, missiles and “kamikaze” drones.

These have targeted civilian homes, schools and hospitals as well as the basic infrastructure supplying electricity, water and heating. But what this has not done is crush the Ukrainian population’s willingness to hold off the invaders.

In the end, Ukraine has not been crushed; traditionally neutral Finland and Sweden have elected to join Nato; Western nations are continuing to supply military materiel to Ukraine; the Russian army has been repeatedly embarrassed by its battlefield defeats; and the invasion has decisively put an end to the hopefulness of the post-Cold War world.

The myth of Russian overwhelming military competence has been exploded and the country is increasingly facing the effects of sanctions imposed by many nations. Even if Putin’s Russia somehow manages to subdue Ukraine on the battlefield, holding it in the face of an embittered population now well trained in fighting back will come at a cost likely to be the ruination of Russia.

None of this is what Putin believed was going to be the outcome of his gamble, but his task now is figuring out how to disentangle his nation from this fiasco – before blowback directly affects his nation’s current circumstances and its future.

For this deeply flawed judgement, along with the appalling damage his gamble has caused and the devastation of Russia’s international reputation and relationships, Putin has the honour of being our International Villain of 2022. DM168

How we chose the People of the Year winners

In the past, Daily Maverick journalists decided who they thought warranted the title of Person of the Year, but for the second year running we have asked readers to vote for their preferred choice, with the proviso that we still have the final say. Choosing the annual winners is a labour of love because that’s what it takes to get a bunch of DM editors to decide whether they agree or disagree with the choices of 13,000 readers. Over the next few days we will republish online all the results in various categories. – Heather Robertson, DM168 editor

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.