The Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä only managed to kill between 500 to 600 Russians and the Russians hate him.

Joseph Stalin, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, managed to kill Russians by the millions and the Russians love him. They still love him.

So by all accounts and going on Soviet and Russian history, Vladimir Putin must and will have to have millions of Russians killed before his own death.

The Russians love Putin. Worship Putin. Ready to die for Putin at a moments notice.

And the Russians will erect statues of Putin. Decorating and worshiping murderous tyrants. Just like the Russians have always done. It’s a ‘Russian Soul’ kinda thing. ‘Westerners’ just can’t seem to grasp it or understand it, supposedly.

This is reportedly (Caroline Belton’s superb book ‘Putin’s People’) something that Putin really worries about. He is terrified of dying like Saddam Hussein, Ceascescu, or Qaddafhi, humiliated and rejected – especially if at the hands of his own people. He trusts absolutely nobody, as a result, and the slightest suspicion of disloyalty or rivalry is almost always terminal. There is a very, very long list of expired Putin allies, and even more of dead enemies.

He has good reason to be paranoid, too. There have been around 20 assassination attempts by Russian rivals. He sees his own legacy as Peter the Great Mk2, founder of a potent Novorussiya, an Empire that will redefine world order to suit its great status. In fact he has built the Russian Federation as a mafia state, where the only organising principle is enforced corruption. As capo di cap tuttii, the chances are slim that he will die peacefully, beloved by his grateful people.

It’s a shame really. Putin had such opportunity in Russia’s colossal mineral, oil and gas wealth, to develop and modernise Russia for the prosperity, freedom and benefit of all Russians, and the rest of the world. For a while that seemed possible, but in the end his thug criminal past and KGB cunning made him a monster instead.