The second popular explanation of Putin’s shift is that he is irrational, and that Russia’s foreign policy is merely an extension of the fantasies of a man who stages stunts like leading Siberian white cranes along their migration route in a motorized hang glider. But that raises an obvious question: How did a person who once looked like Russia’s most modern and dependable ruler since Czar Alexander II – a man whom US President George W. Bush called “very straightforward and trustworthy” in 2001 – suddenly become crazier than Rasputin?