In 2015, to prove that Russia was still a superpower — another short-term sugar high for his base — Putin sent advisers, Russian Air Force jets, special operations teams and surface-to-air missile batteries to Syria to prevent the toppling of Russia’s Cold War ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Putin’s support, along with the help of Iran, has just barely kept Assad upright, but for now Putin is stuck in the middle of Syria and can’t get out, lest Assad falls and Putin looks foolish.

Here is how a veteran Russian foreign policy expert, Vladimir Frolov, described Putin’s Syria fix in a March 5, 2018, essay in The Moscow Times:

In Syria, Russia is discovering that winning the war might be easier than winning the peace. Each time President Putin declares victory or announces a drawdown of Russian forces, like he did in December, the fighting flares up with a new intensity and Moscow is required to fly in reinforcements … Moscow is now struggling to parlay its military gains into an internationally legitimate political settlement that would help Russia recoup its investments in the conflict. For now, Syria remains ungovernable and splintered into fiefdoms run by regional players with their own interests.

Putin’s latest beef-for-sugar trade was his apparent ordering of the use of a military-grade nerve agent, produced only in Russia, to poison the former Russian spy Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the English city of Salisbury. The Western response has been what British Prime Minister Theresa May described as the biggest collective expulsion of alleged Russian intelligence officers ever — over 100 from more than 20 countries.

Whether timed or coincidental, the poisoning attack and the Western backlash helped Putin run up his vote totals in his latest phony presidential re-election — another sugar high. But the morning after, Putin’s Russia is more isolated than ever. Also, Putin’s cronies and other Russian oligarchs — whose game is to make tons of dirty money in Russia and then take it to London, where it can be laundered for safekeeping — are now getting more scrutinized than ever by British authorities.

And then there is Putin’s long-range strategy — to bet against Mother Nature, human nature and Moore’s Law, all at once. He’s betting against Mother Nature — that the world will indefinitely remain addicted to his oil and gas in an age of disruptive climate change. He’s betting against human nature — that his young people won’t want to be free to realize their full potential, not just live off sugar-high memories of historical greatness. And he’s betting against Moore’s Law — that the steady growth of technology won’t empower Russia’s youth to connect and collaborate, and see through his charade.

Putin’s troubles are nothing I celebrate. I was against NATO expansion; I wanted Russia integrated into the family of European democracies. A weak, isolated and humiliated Russia is a dangerous animal. But to thrive in the long term, Russia needs a “reset,” and it can come only from within, but Putin won’t press the button.

“Without reform, there is little reason to be optimistic about Russia’s long-run growth trend, given its poor demographic profile, weak institutions and abject failure to diversify its economy, despite having an enormously talented and creative population,” Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard University economist, wrote in The Guardian last year. “If the world continues to move toward a low-carbon future, Russia will confront an inevitable choice: launch economic and political reforms or face continuing marginalization, with or without Western sanctions.”

It’s sad to see a country that gave us Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Spassky, Sakharov, Stravinsky, Shishkin, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pushkin, Nureyev and the Google co-founder Sergey Brin become better known for giving the world Novichok, the deadly Russian nerve agent used in Britain; “little green men,” the disguised Russian soldiers who seized Eastern Ukraine; and Guccifer 2.0, the Russian cyberagent who hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

It’s all beef for sugar — and that’s Putin’s legacy.