Reading Putin: Unbalanced or cagily preying on West’s fears?

By NOMAAN MERCHANT and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vladimir Putin is raising fears that he has become more reckless, more committed to restoring the USSR, perhaps more likely to set off a world-altering war. There’s no way to determine from a distance whether the Russian president is becoming unstable or if he is simply preying on the West’s fears. It’s an uncertainty that complicates the response to his invasion of Ukraine. But Putin’s directive to put Russia’s nuclear weapons in an increased state of readiness for possible launch demonstrates a no-holds-barred approach that could potentially draw the world’s two biggest nuclear powers into a dangerous confrontation.