Three months into his war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is holding firm on his plan to restore Russian glory and protect his iron grip on power.
To understand why, it pays to understand his past.
Things are not going to plan for Vladimir Putin.
The once-feared Russian army has long since abandoned its goal of capturing Ukraine's capital Kyiv, and it's been largely beaten back from the country's second-largest city, Kharkiv.
Moscow's tactics for its invasion have changed — it is now solely focused on the ground war in the eastern Donbas region, and in the south.
In those areas, it has managed to push its lines forward but the gains are incremental, often just a few kilometres at a time.
There has been no breakthrough.
Many experts classify the fighting now as little more than a standstill, with both sides braced for months of combat ahead.
No matter how you look at it, Putin's "special military operation" — as he calls it — is far from achieving the goals he spelled out at the beginning of the invasion in his televised address to the nation, and the world, on February 24.
"[The] goal is to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv for eight years," Putin said.
"And for this, we will pursue the demilitarisation and 'de-nazification' of Ukraine."
As the world has witnessed, rather than laying down its arms, Ukraine's armed forces — and its civilians — have mounted fierce resistance.
Three months into the war, estimating the scale of Russian losses is difficult — the Kremlin hasn't released any figures for the past two months.
Ukraine claims the current toll is now close to 30,000 Russian soldiers killed. Some Western intelligence sources suggest this number is too high. Yet Britain's Ministry of Defence estimates 50,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded.
In a sign the losses are mounting, Russia is now considering scrapping the upper 40-year-old age limit for soldiers.
At home, Putin still talks of the "de-nazification" of Ukraine, but there's little prospect now of toppling the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy has survived attempts to kill him, and his government remains in Kyiv. His video addresses have rallied Ukrainian support at home and around the world.
He's had visits from the White House, Downing Street and the UN — the country even won last week's Eurovision song contest.
But Putin is showing no sign of weakening. He has acknowledged there will be pain but, according to the world of Vladimir, Russia will endure.
On Victory Day earlier this month — an anniversary celebrating Russia's triumph over Nazi Germany that has morphed into a parade of military might — the Russian President told his nation and the world his country had no choice but to act in Ukraine.
"The danger was rising by the day," he said in his speech on Red Square.
"Russia has given a pre-emptive response to an aggression — [the] only correct decision by a sovereign, powerful and independent country".
Putin said Russian troops in Ukraine had been fighting for "the motherland".
"No-one will forget the lessons of World War II and there will be no place in the world for hangmen, executioners and the Nazis".
As international companies abandon the country, as the last vestiges of independent media disappear, as connections to Europe and the US are cut, Russia is bracing for more self-reliance — an existence largely isolated from the West.
It's a future Vladimir Putin is very comfortable with.
It's much like the country that moulded his past: The USSR.
KGB dreaming
Amidst stories of Vladimir Putin's enormous personal wealth and power, it's worth remembering his childhood.
It was simple, typically Soviet, and there is no doubt it shaped him.
His father barely survived World War II and he was born after two older siblings had died.
The Putins lived in a shared "kommunalka" apartment in Leningrad, now St Petersburg. There was one stove and one toilet, shared by three families.
At the height of the Cold War in the sixties, most Soviet kids dreamed of becoming cosmonauts.
Not Vladimir Putin.
As journalist Masha Gessen writes in her biography of Putin, as a teenager he had a portrait of Yan Berzin, the founder of Soviet military intelligence, on his desk.
Putin himself enjoys telling the story of how he tried to join the KGB when he was just 16. They passed then, but he did find his way in after graduating from Leningrad State University.
It would be hard to describe his KGB career as stellar. Putin had studied German and his only international assignment was in Germany.
In 1985 he was posted not to East Berlin, where, as Masha Gessen points out, he could have actively recruited spies in the West, but instead went to Dresden, an industrial city in the heart of East Germany.
He was there when the Berlin Wall fell and the German Democratic Republic began to implode. Putin, his first wife and two daughters returned to Leningrad in 1990 as the Soviet Union itself was falling apart.
They moved back into one room in his parent's two-bedroom apartment in Leningrad.
But soon, his long climb up the political ladder would begin.
Putin learns politics
In 1990, at the age of 38, Putin became an adviser to the Mayor of St Petersburg and gradually became a power player in the city's administration.
Within just a few years, he was suspected of orchestrating a multi-million-dollar kickback scheme but he was never charged.
At this time, Putin started to learn some valuable lessons about how politics in the new Russia worked.
"His formative years were spent, essentially, as a deputy mayor in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), enriching himself off the backs of people who were going hungry," said Sydney-based journalist Zoya Sheftalovich, a contributing editor for Politico Europe.
By 1996, he moved to the Kremlin.
His KGB background undoubtedly helped him move up the ranks and by 1998, he was running the FSB, the organisation that had succeeded the KGB after the USSR dissolved.
Putin was little known outside of the Kremlin when then-president Boris Yeltsin appointed him prime minister in 1999.
He was a compromise candidate, not seen as having much political ambition.
But many speculated his background in the security services was a big advantage.
Putin could provide stability after a period of economic chaos, as well as protecting the financial gains Yelstin and those around him had made while they were in power.
Soon after his appointment, a series of apartment bombings swept Russia. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists, but many have suspected the blasts were actually the work of the FSB.
"All of a sudden, we saw these very mysterious bombings in Moscow apartment buildings that had quite interesting links to the FSB … and all of a sudden we had to blame that on Chechnya," Sheftalovich said.
Putin talked tough and sent Russian troops to crush Chechnya's capital, Grozny. His popularity soared.
Relentless favourable coverage from Russia's state media pushed him to the top of a crowded field in the presidential election in 2000.
He easily won that election, receiving 53 per cent of the vote — 23 per cent more than his nearest rival, the leader of the Communist Party.
The Imperial president
Russia's first post-Soviet leader, Boris Yeltsin, had been widely ridiculed.
At times he appeared drunk and out of control in public. In the final years of his presidency, Russia's economy was in chaos.
Putin quickly set about building an image as the anti-Yeltsin. Bare-chested hunting trips. Judo competitions. Hardworking and deadly serious.
And the Russian public liked the image they were shown.
Initially, Putin sought to engage the West. In 2001, he addressed the German Bundestag in fluent German and spoke of Russia's place in Europe.
"I am convinced that today we are turning over a new page in our bilateral relations, thereby making our joint contribution to building a common European home," he said at the time.
Far from ridicule, Putin inspired fear and respect.
In 2009, Australian James Blake was one of the few "Angliiski" or non-Russians allowed to be in the main Russia Today newsroom when Putin came to visit.
RT, as it's known, is the Kremlin's international news channel.
"There was considerable nervousness in the newsroom," said Blake, who was RT's business editor at the time.
Despite days of preparation, what struck Blake was how brief the visit was; Putin was clearly uncomfortable in this kind of environment.
"He and [RT Editor Margarita Simonyan] spent all of about 90 seconds down at the front of the newsroom standing alongside the desk of one of the translators [then], no sooner was he there than he was gone.
"When I asked one of the Russian journalists I was with what she thought of proceedings she replied: 'He is a short man, but he has an energy.'"
Ideology? No, self-preservation
Not long after the war in Ukraine began, so did the questions about Putin's hold on power.
There was speculation that powerful elements in the security services and the elites might decide the costs of the war were too high, particularly as Russia's invasion became bogged down and the economy felt the heavy impact of sanctions.
Some even predicted Putin would be ousted in a coup.
But three months into the war, his control in Moscow seems as strong as ever.
On Russian state media every night, audiences are fed hours of coverage portraying a very different picture of the war — one in which Ukraine is the aggressor and its troops are the ones committing war crimes.
Despite occasional public displays of opposition, Putin can still count on sizeable public support for the war
Behind the scenes, there has been plenty of intrigue as security services scramble to escape the fallout from the disastrous pre-war intelligence provided to the Kremlin.
But none of that appears to have threatened Putin's control.
A little more than a decade ago, there were real questions about whether or not Vladimir Putin would voluntarily give up power.
In 2011, Putin had to decide whether he would again run for president after spending one term as prime minister. Russia's constitution forbids more than two consecutive presidential terms, so in 2008 the Kremlin arranged a switch.
Deputy PM Dmitry Medvedev easily won the election as Russia's president and he appointed Putin as his prime minister.
I arrived as the ABC's correspondent in Moscow during this time and witnessed this political charade play out.
Dmitry Medvedev was Russia's president but everyone knew the real power had simply moved to the prime minister's office.
No one doubted Vladimir Putin was still running the country.
When Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the main road outside our office window, fell silent, that was the cue that in a few minutes Putin's convey would be speeding down the closed-off eight-lane street into the centre of Moscow.
But he wasn't heading to the Kremlin.
In the period from 2008-2012, the prime minister's office was in the "Russian White House", the Russian Federation Government House on the Moscow River.
The real power had followed Putin there.
As the decision whether to return to the presidency approached, the Arab Spring revolutions were sweeping the Middle East. The events deeply impacted Putin.
"Seeing the film footage of the Arab Spring was what caused him to essentially take power back because he didn't think he could trust Medvedev to keep his grip on power," said Sheftalovich.
"It's quite well known that he saw the mobile phone footage of [Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi] being captured and then tortured and killed.
"Apparently, according to those who were close to him, [he was] horrified by that footage.
"I think he saw that what was happening to Gaddafi could very well happen to him."
No turning back
Sheftalovich lived in Ukraine until she was seven years old, when it was still part of the USSR. Her family immigrated to Australia in 1992.
For her, the fear of an Arab Spring-type revolution in Russia is one of the drivers behind Putin's war in Ukraine.
And it's not just NATO, she says, it's that Ukraine was on the path to becoming a successful, democratic country.
"I think for Putin, you don't want an example of a successful democracy right next door speaking your language."
From the Kremlin's viewpoint, if Ukraine could move to the West, so, theoretically, could Russia. And that would mean Putin and his entire power apparatus, all of their wealth and influence, would be dismantled.
Sheftalovich believes for those around Putin, there's no turning back.
"The only thing they care about is their own skins, and it doesn't look great for them if Putin leaves."
'Selling' a victory
The Kremlin now faces a harsh reality: its military has been out-fought on the ground, and its generals have been out-thought in command.
How could the Russian army perform so poorly?
"Fish rot from the head," said recently retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan.
"When you have a bad strategy from the start, you can't fix that."
Ryan, now a military strategist, has been following the war closely.
He's written about battlefield developments for the ABC and for his more than 200,000 followers on Twitter, his analysis has become required reading.
"Vladimir Putin made three incorrect assumptions: Ukraine is not a real country, Ukraine wouldn't fight, and the West wouldn't intervene," Ryan said.
"All three proved wrong."
Wars only end, according to Ryan, when one side is defeated or through negotiation. He tips the latter. There will be some sort of peace deal, "but not yet".
He said Russia needed to do more to claim some form of victory in Donbas and the south after Ukraine had a taste of success in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
A plausible victory — one that can be sold to the Russian people — is the only way out for Putin and those around him.
It seems no amount of civilian deaths or economic hardship will keep them from that goal.
Russia flattened Grozny in Chechnya. It unleashed terrible destruction on Aleppo in Syria. It's now doing the same in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has learned the lesson: the best way to protect power is to hang onto it. Even if it takes a war.
Credits
Reporting: Norman Hermant
Editing and digital production: Nick Sas
Opening image: Emma Machan
