With the reports and images of Jill Biden visiting Olena Zelenskyy in Ukraine, it is apparent that the presidents of Ukraine and the United States have one important human trait in common: they are in a warm and loving relationship with a life partner who is their equal, their best friend, who gives them strength, good advice and a sound perspective on life.
It is equally apparent that the monster in the Kremlin, president Vladimir Putin, lacks a companion of that kind. He is divorced, but he never made any public appearances with his former wife even while they were married. He never even mentioned her. There are strong and credible rumors that he has a mistress, a former elite gymnast, or at least he had one, and that they have children together. Instead of being open with this, he hides her away and uses his power to suppress information about her and their relation, as if it were a state secret. Some pictures from twenty years back seem to show Putin being genuinely smitten by her, even smiling, but it seems that they almost never meet these days.
Putin lives a life devoid of love. He neither gives love, nor gets any. He thrives on people's adulation and fear, but that doesn't work as a replacement. Without love, the soul withers and dies, and Putin is indeed soulless.
He might be incapable of love, because full-fledged psychopaths do not have emotions like other people. Perhaps he once had a sliver of humanity inside him, a faint flicker of what others experience as a hot flame that defines them as human beings, but now it's definitely gone. Putin loves nobody but himself, and he is not loved by anyone. Not really. Not in the way love is supposed to work.
I do not pity him. I pity the world for having to put up with him, and for our inability to deal with truly evil people.
