At this moment in the drama I’m probably in the minority who thinks this will end badly for Vladimir Putin. In these first moments he seems to hold all the best cards. But the consequences for this kind of naked aggression in the 21st century are yet to be felt.

Leading up to yesterday’s invasion of Ukraine there was plenty of discussion of why Putin would risk something like this? The most common answers being that he sees himself as the Grand Restorer of the Russian (i.e. Soviet) empire, and he’s doing it now while he still has the kind of economic leverage over the West that comes with pumping so much gas onto the world markets. It’s a leverage even he must know will dry up once western Europe in particular goes green (or nuclear) and stops sending him — and I do mean him, personally — billions of dollars (and they’re mostly dollars) in exchange.

But Putin’s bigger problem is also largely of his own making. He is administering a shockingly sick country. 20% of Russians don’t have indoor plumbing. The country is ranked 70th in the world standard of living. It has a GDP 20% smaller than Italy. Russian conscripts are paid the equivalent of $28 a month. (One pundit joked that this war would end today if the European Union offered citizenship to every Russian soldier who laid down his rifle and migrated west.)

Under Putin’s 23 year rule, he has orchestrated a partnering with a cadre of mob-like oligarchs to whom he is Vito Corleone. Each of these characters are not just looting Russian resources — gas, aluminum, etc. — for their private fiefdoms but are kicking back so much cash to Putin he is widely regarded as the wealthiest person on the planet as of this morning, far beyond the wildest dreams of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

And every (thinking) Russian knows this.

Whether the sanctions — and other retaliations by the West — cyber attacks and the like, will be enough to incite revolt inside Russia remains to be seen. Russian history is after all a tale of an endless series of semi-god-like strong men tolerated by the woefully abused masses out of fear that Oppresive Leader is their only protection from another invasion — from the Asian east or the imperial/fascist West (Napoleon and Hitler).

But that was before the internet. Before a constantly interconnected liberal intelligentsia could see and hear in real time what was true and what was just the hysterical war-mongering of Putin’s state media.

Here by the way is a sample of what Russian TV (your average Rooskie’s FoxNews) was saying prior to the invasion. (Via the Los Angeles Times:

“To hear Russian media tell it, the government of Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis waging a genocidal campaign against ethnic Russians in the country’s east, where Moscow-backed authorities regularly uncover mass graves full of the corpses of women and children with bound hands and bludgeoned heads even as they face the hell of constant shelling.

“Such false images and narratives have become a daily staple in Russia….The Russian media have gone into overdrive with stories depicting a government in Kyiv so cruel that Moscow has no choice but to swoop in and protect the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

“ ‘It’s a war between the Ukrainian government and its own people…. People are dying there every day. Thousands of civilians died there. Thousands of children lost their limbs there, buried in little coffins’,” Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-funded broadcaster RT, said on a talk show on the Russia-1 channel.”

Having successfully undermined international confidence in the United States through his manipulation of social media and fluffing up Donald Trump, and by degrading Great Britain with Brexit, Putin appears to believe he’s succeeded in splitting the West. To the point that the principal forces of NATO are now so polarized and fragmented they are incapable of wreaking any serious economic damage on him personally.

Judging by Trump and Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and Mike Pompeo and the other usual suspects aligning themselves more with Putin than the United States and NATO, it’s tempting to think he’s right.

But I think he’s delusional. A creature of his own bubble. I believe NATO in particular, and world markets in general, are tired of the constant corruption-induced chaos they’re suffering at Putin’s hand. To the point that, with something as unquivocally outrageous as this invasion, they’re united enough to want him — Putin — to suffer a resounding defeat.

You’re hearing it from many quarters: Direct, personal sanctions on Putin and his high-flying mob cronies. Freezing of their accounts, confiscation of their property, (much of it likely acquired via money-laundering — hello again, Donald J. Trump), expulsion from Western communities, colleges, etc.

The tough nut on the personal finance front is — as usual — getting international bankers, our good friends the Swiss in particular, to accept that playing cute with the Third Reich wasn’t lesson enough. If you want credibility in the 21st century, you cut ties with indisputable, war-criminal gangsters.

America’s Trumpist media will continue align with Putin, and more loudly as gas prices spike up towards $5 and $6 a gallon. But I don’t see them convincing a majority of Americans – other than the 20% of Republicans who view Putin more favorably than Joe Biden — that this is anyone’s fault other than Putin’s and that things will only get worse if he prevails.