I agree, more empathy all around would be desirable, and I am...

I agree, more empathy all around would be desirable, and I am personally conflicted with my irrational feeling that I find Putin likable.

After reading volumes on Putin, my rational self knows that this empathy is only useful for understanding his own internal justifications, of which you have pointed out.

Vladimir is ruthless, cunning and dangerous. He could have followed the path of his hero, Peter the great, and allowed the greater freedoms of the Western democracies, while retaining Russian culture. Instead, he has become more like Ivan the Terrible.

While it is easy to put blame on the West, and even more so, the U.S. The blame sits firmly with the left over corruption of a disintegrated communist state which oversaw the death of millions through Stalin and the Gulags and now with, ex KGB, Putin's gangster like autocracy.

It is hard to argue against the Ukraine's people's desire, for self determination.

I reserve my empathy for the young men on both sides of the conflict, the mother's sons who we see as charred corpses on the road to Kyiv.