“Not the cold-blooded and clairvoyant dictator he was in 2008” – VG

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– He is no longer the cold-blooded and clairvoyant dictator he was in 2008, says former CIA director John Brennan to NBC News.

Brennan refers to Putin’s military entry into the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in Georgia 14 years ago.

The Russian president has a background as an intelligence officer in the KGB, and has long been characterized as a cynical and calculating player in international politics.

That perception is about to crack for every day the war against Ukraine draws out. Russia invaded the neighboring country on Thursday last week – and has not yet taken control of any of the major cities in the country.

Tuesday is one 26-kilometer-long Russian military column observed on the way to the capital of Ukraine.

Taken to bed

According to NBC, sources in US intelligence believe that Putin feels a growing frustration because the invasion is not going as expected.

Four sources NBC has spoken to say that there is no indication that Putin is mentally unstable, but that the Russian president is behaving differently than before.

The channel writes that US intelligence claims to have information that the Russian president has reached out to several of his closest associates in recent outbursts of rage.

The corona pandemic is also said to have led to Putin largely isolating himself from the rest of the Kremlin.

“This is a person who has clearly been taken to bed by the size of the Ukrainian opposition,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner told MSNBC.

Warner chairs the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

– He has isolated himself. He has not been much in the Kremlin, says Warner, who believes that Putin is increasingly getting his information from “yes-people” around him.

– Even more dangerous

Republican Senator Marco Rubio agrees with Warner’s message on Twitter.

– We are NOT dealing with 2008-Putin, Rubio writes on Twitter.

– It is a big mistake to assume that he will make the same considerations and decisions he made back then today. The old Putin was a cold-blooded but calculated killer, he writes, adding:

– The new Putin is more dangerous.

On Sunday, Putin ordered the Russian military to deploy nuclear weapons in what he calls “combat readiness” as a result of relations with the West due to the war in Ukraine.

Monday night it became known that Norway is broadcasting 2000 M72 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. The Russians have already reached out to Western countries that send weapons to the Ukrainians.

– It marks the end of Europe as a “pacifist project to gather people after World War II”, it wrote Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement Sunday.

Norwegian experts are not agreed that Norway is now a party to a war.

– No, according to international law, one does not become a party to a conflict by contributing weapons. But one can be perceived as a “co-enemy”, said Gro Nystuen, the international law expert who is assistant director of NIM, the Norwegian institution for human rights to VG on Tuesday.

– Following the decision to supply weapons, Norway can no longer claim to be neutral. When one goes in and gives one party active support in the form of weapons, there is a breach of the neutrality line. It makes us a party. Then it is up to Russia how they will interpret this, and whether they will invoke international law if they now choose to violate Norwegian national borders, said International Law Adviser and lawyer Mads Harlem.

Read more about what the experts think about the case her.

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