Putin pursues several goals with his invasion of Ukraine. Showing the Americans how little he cares what they think is always personally gratifying and politically useful. Distracting the people of Russia from the plummeting value of the rouble is also an important goal.

And there is something else. In his efforts to preserve the Federation intact, Putin has alienated the Russian extreme nationalists (or neo-Nazis). The neo-Nazis hated Putin for pandering to the Chechens, for paying trillions of roubles to Chechnya and Dagestan so that they don’t try to leave the federation, for refusing to require entrance visas from non-Slavic neighboring republics, for permitting a huge non-Slavic immigration into Russia, for punishing xenophobic statements that endanger the Federation with a prison term.

However, in these last few weeks, the neo-Nazis have developed a guarded warmth in their discussions of Putin’s most recent actions. The official discourse about Ukraine that is coming out of Kremlin has every ingredient to gladden the heart of a neo-Nazi.

During the Spanish Civil War, the only way each side could make itself kill fellow Spaniards was by convincing that there were no Spaniards on the other side. The Republicans knew they were fighting Hitler’s Nazis and Mussolini’s Fascists, and the Nationals convinced themselves that there were only Soviet Marxists and Judeo-Masonic conspirators on the opposite side. This way of thinking made it easy to shoot at your brother, sister, neighbor, friend because you imagined them as evil strangers.

In a similar way, the Russians who are cheering the invasion of Ukraine have convinced themselves that they are not endorsing the killing of Ukrainians. It’s easier for them to believe that the only people in Ukraine who do not welcome the Russian invasion are neo-Nazis in the American pay. And when you say “a US Nazi”, you create an expression that brings together the two things a Russian speaker is trained from birth to detest and despise the most. It is so much easier to shoot at a Ukrainian when you have imaged that he is “an American Nazi.”

Obama is holding lengthy phone conversations with Putin, explaining to the Russian president that his invasion of Ukraine violates international law.

These conversations are a royal waste of time. Putin couldn’t care less about international law. To him, Russia us exceptional, it is the new future world leader that exists on a different plane from tiresome international accords and laws.

Obama’s international advisors are not very educated because he routinely addresses Putin in terms that are not likely to work.