Walter Russell Mead: “The best way to think about Mr. Putin is as a gifted tactician committed to a strategic impossibility: for Russia to regain the superpower status once held by the Soviet Union. Such leaders are unappeasable because their goals can never be reached. The rise of China, Russia’s continuing demographic decline, and its continuing inability to create a modern and dynamic economy will not end because Russian flags fly over the ruins of Kyiv.” “There are two mistakes we can make about figures like Mr.