Putin is wreaking havoc on Ukraine in order to send a message to the rest of the world.

Slaughter is unfolding in Ukraine. 2,000 civilians have died. 1.5 million have been displaced and are now refugees of war. In Irpin, Russian soldiers opened fire on fleeing civilians, killing children. The Mayor of Irpin wrote, “A family died in front of my eyes. Two small children and two adults died.” There is a single escape route out of Irpin, and Russian soldiers are shelling civilians attempting to use it. Russia has broken the ceasefire in Mariupol, preventing civilians from evacuating. An 18-month old was killed by shrapnel in Mariupol. His mother can be seen crying, “why?”

It’s a horrific sight. Europe hasn’t borne witness to devastation of this scale — millions of refugees, one of its largest nations under attack from a neighbour — since World War II. It is every bit as serious as it seems — perhaps even more so. The US Ambassador to the UN remarked, “It’s clear Mr Putin has a plan to brutalize Ukraine.”

The question that needs to be asked is this: why is Putin slaughtering Ukraine? What is the the point, the purpose?

Let me take a moment to explain why this question matters. Why is Putin risking so much? His nation’s economy is in freefall. The average Russian is going to lose their life savings, their jobs, their futures. Russia is a pariah state now — and standards of living are going to fall dramatically as Russians lose access to Western goods from iPhones to Chanel handbags. Russia will be a permanently poorer country.

But it’s hardly just Russia’s future that Putin has thrown away with the slaughter in Ukraine. He can never come back. To the West. He is a war criminal now, being investigated by the International Criminal Court at the Hague. There is little doubt it will indict him. And when it does, at that precise moment, Putin will never again be able to step foot in the West. The days of stepping off a jetway in London or Paris or Washington are over for him. He is a marked man now, persona non grata, the West’s enemy, and the West will now pursue him to the bitter end. Putin has thrown away his own future, too.

Why would he do all that? By slaughtering innocents and causing an exodus in a way Europe hasn’t seen since the last World War? What is the purpose of all this?

Opinions are divided. And at this point, division is a sin the West can ill afford. This moment needs absolute clarity of thought, and a deep understanding of what Putin’s intentions and goals are. Otherwise, the West sill stay reactive — instead of being able to deter Putin, and stop him in his tracks.

Let’s dispense with a few theories that have become commonplace — but are false.

The first is that Putin is a “madman” or a “lunatic.” It’s easy enough to believe this, and it’s certainly comforting. Much more chilling to think that he might not be. And every indication is that he’s thought this through — even if the resistance is fiercer than he expected and the costs higher. Putin prepared for this moment for decades. He waged the first stages of a hybrid war on the West in spectacular fashion. He elevated Trump to President and pushed Brexit in Britain and funded and sparked far right movements across Europe. He destabilized the entire Western world in a series of grim, brilliant, devastating disinformation and propaganda attacks, carefully spy crafted intelligence operations like hacking Hillary’s emails, or carpet-bombing Brits with Big Lies about Brexit — all of which by now should be recognised as serious attacks, acts of war.

You don’t interfere in an American election and a European referendum if you’re just a thoughtless fool. You do it for a reason — it is a signal that you are preparing something even bigger. It is a serious risk, and you don’t take it unless you expect a serious return. Putin is not really a “madman.” He has a goal and a plan and a strategy — and he waited carefully and patiently until he’d destabilised the West, divided, split Britain from the EU, turned America into a hotbed of radicalised soccer moms threatening to shoot up schools having been bombarded by propaganda on Facebook. Then he struck, and his troops rolled into Ukraine.

Even now, there is a reason behind Putin’s slaughter of Ukrainians, which I’ll come to shortly. First, let’s keep going through the various theories, so we are thinking clearly and well.

The next is that Putin wants a “buffer state.” One to distance him from NATO and the West. If that’s all Putin wanted, he would already be at the negotiating table, because Ukraine has already hinted at offering neutrality. Putin does not just want a “buffer state” — even at this juncture, it should be increasingly clear that this theory is false.

There are deeper reasons that Putin doesn’t just want a buffer state — which I’ll only touch on for a moment, and leave for future essays. Before this war, Russia was riding high. It was one of the world’s few creditor nations. The West owed it money. Creditor nations do not need buffer states — because wars tend to break out when debtor nations, starved of resources, decide to take from their neighbours by force what they can’t buy with money. Russia was not remotely in that position vis-a-vis Ukraine. As one of the world’s few creditor nations, it had no reason whatsoever to invade and create a “buffer state.” If the West owed it money for the resources Russia was perpetually selling it — who needs a “buffer”? This theory is smoke and mirrors — promoted by Putin’s disinformation himself, and by Western analysts who don’t really grasp the basics of global economics.

The second theory is that Putin wants “control of” or to “conquer” Ukraine. This theory, too, appears by now to be self-evidently false. Putin is not going to be able to conquer or control Ukraine. The Ukrainians are putting up too much resistance, as it’s emerged, fierce and brave. But more deeply than that, you don’t destroy a nation you want to control. You don’t bomb its neighbourhoods and destroy its infrastructure. You try to capture it with a minimum of damage. You wage a slow and patient war of attrition and encirclement and lay siege, even if takes months or years. But the Ukrainian Administration estimates that Russia has destroyed 202 schools, 34 hospitals, more than 1500 residential buildings. Entire areas lack electricity, running water, and heating.

You don’t turn a nation you want to control into Syria — what’s the point of controlling a destroyed one? There isn’t one, at least not for a nation like Russia. Maybe for a warlord in the Congo — but not in this context, for a relatively wealthy society like Russia.

All these theories to me appear to be wrong. Putin is not a fool or a madman. He doesn’t just want a “buffer state.” He doesn’t even really want to “conquer” Ukraine. So why is he slaughtering Ukrainians?

To send a message. He is making an example of Ukraine. He is saying to the West — and in particular, to the next set of nations in line — this is what happens if you resist. I don’t give up. I double down. I stop at nothing. I will kill mothers and children. I will kill grandfathers in wheelchairs. I will destroy your cities with weapons of war, from schools to hospitals. I will reduce you to rubble. You will be the next Syria. And nobody can stop it.

Putin is sending a message and making an example. Think of how any good mafia works. If someone, a local shop, doesn’t pay up the protection money, the mafioso have no choice but to inflict serious damage. Not just for the sake of punishing them. But so that everyone else pays up. They have to make an example in order to exert power and be feared. No mafia can exist without making examples of those who cross the line. And no dictator can, either.

So Putin is, in my view, making an example of Ukraine. He is teaching a lesson. See what happens if you resist me? Your choices are these: give in, and you won’t face slaughter. Or resist, and I will slaughter you in terrible and total ways. I won’t spare anyone or anything. I won’t obey any rules of war or international law or codes of justice. I will just devastate and murder and pillage.

And you might be next.

Putin is sending a message. To the nations who are next in line. Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, even Poland. He is telling them what they face if they resist. The level of suffering being inflicted on the Ukrainians, he is telling them, is something he is perfectly happy to do to them, too. He is sending a message meant to terrorize.

Think about it this way. He’s already a war criminal. That’s a “sunk cost,” in game theoretic terms, if you like. So being more of a war criminal is hardly something he’s likely to worry about. Instead, having crossed this line, he is sending a clear message to the entire West, and to the nations who are next in his campaign to reconstitute the USSR — yes, this is how far I’m willing to go. I’m willing to be regarded as a war criminal. To wreck my economy. To turn my nation into a pariah state. To kill on a horrific scale. None of that matters to me at all. None of it deters or stops me. Yes, I’m a war criminal. So what?

I am coming for you, next.

Here is the part that really chills me.

You don’t send such a message unless there is someone else you want to hear it. Sending a message by making an example out of Ukraine alone seems to confirm the theory that Putin will not stop here. That, yes, he really does plan to wage not just “a” war, but a campaign of war, that reaches into the heart of Europe. That the former Soviet states are next, then Poland — and, as Zelensky desperately recently said, “I’m telling you — he will march all the way to the gates of Berlin. Please, listen.”

You don’t send a message unless you want someone to hear it. The message isn’t for Ukrainians. They are the ones facing this terrible slaughter — they are living it. They are the example. The message Putin is sending is for the rest of us. It’s for the West as a whole. It says: I don’t think of you as a very formidable enemy. I am not scared of you. You won’t stop me. I won’t back down — I will go on doubling down. Hear my message. See it written in blood and ruin. I am coming for you next.

In my view, turning Ukraine into Aleppo is a calculation. It isn’t just an act of desperation. If Putin was really desperate, he’d simply back down. Worse things have happened in history than surrendering a war you can’t really win, anyways. But he isn’t doing that. Not even close. He is sending, instead, a clear message to us. By escalating. I am willing to turn Europe’s capitols into Syrian rubble.

I won’t stop here. This is just the beginning of what’s to come. I’m not intimidated, deterred, even a little worried. Here, let me show you. Let me send you a message, in murder and death. Can you hear it yet? I’m going to come for you. Those who are next in line? This is what awaits you if you resist. It doesn’t matter to me how many of my own soldiers die, how my own people suffer, how my nation’s future goes up in smoke. None of that matters at all to me. I am just going to escalate until I get what I want. And what I want next is you. Are you still going to be foolish enough to resist?

I’m a war criminal already. And I’m willing to risk nuclear war to get what I want. You don’t think I’m serious? See how I turn your fine European cities into Syrian rubble already. This is what I’m willing to do — for as long as it takes, as hard as it needs, to get what I want, which is my empire of pain.

I won’t stop here.

Maybe you begin to see my point of view a little bit. This moment, as I warned, demands absolute clarity of thought. It’s easy to say that Putin is a madman. But these aren’t the acts of a madman — or even a desperate one. They’re the acts of a careful, calculated thinker. Putin in my estimation is making an example of Ukraine, teaching us how indifferent he is to our sanctions, rules, indictments, boycotts, rejection, protests. He is telling us that none of this matter to him at all, nor do deaths and suffering on his own side. All that matters is aggression, domination, absolute power.

You don’t send a message unless you need to teach someone else a lesson. The one you’re making an example of isn’t the one you’re trying to teach a lesson. It’s the ones who are next in line. Putin is telling us he won’t stop here. We are the intended recipients of this message he is sending by making an example of Ukraine, in blood and death.