Maybe, Sorokin suggests, Putin doesn’t even aspire to victory in Ukraine. He repeats Salvador Dalí’s famous line about Hitler unleashing the second world war “not to win, as most people think, but to lose”.

“Exactly as in Wagner’s operas, it has to end for him, the hero, as tragically as possible,” Dalí’ wrote in 1944. “I think Putin’s the same,” Sorokin says.

Геростратический акт же