What happens next is anybody's guess and that's a very bad feeling to have in times like these, the fate of the world as we know it is in the balance.

Putin has long kept his narcissism under a kind of control.

A bit of bare-chest, bareback horseriding. A few ice hockey matches with opponents who comically offer little resistance. A gigantic pseudosecret palatial residence that looks like a seat of power for a Bond villain, but is actually his safe space.

But even in Russia's nationally televised broadcasts Putin appears to be struggling to control his emotions and his temper.

It's not particularly difficult to see that loyalty to a psychopath loses its currency when that psychopath has no use for you, but also that using your loyalty as a constant mediating influence becomes impossible when the psychopath departs from reality.

The question for any kind of diplomacy, hardball or softball, is this: is Vladimir Putin still in full control of himself? Because he's behaving unusually on the basis of his prior record. Only a handful of years ago he was a very different figure on the world stage. If his narcissism has no supply, no moderation, things could get even uglier.

And yet again he is signposting it -- "all relevant decisions have been taken."

We kept pretending his signposts were diplomatic noise, when in fact he's just a psychopath telling people what he is going to do to them.

It took a minute for them to realize we have two feeble minded and weak kneed presidents in office currently. The cats outta the bag now.