Mr. Putin is a modern-day Peter the Great, we’re told. He has visions—of a Eurasian Union to counter the European Union, of Russia leading an orthodox counterrevolution to Western libertinism. These tidbits of Russian propaganda, of extraordinarily recent vintage, explain nothing.

The visions that propel Mr. Putin are of himself hanging by his heels from a lamppost or spending the next 20 years in a dock answering for everything from the disappearance of $90 million in food money in St. Petersburg when he was deputy mayor to the 2006 murder of critic Alexander Litvinenko in London.

His campaign of intimidation aimed at Ukraine is about protecting his position at the head of the Russian klepto-banquet. Popular overthrow of a crony oligarchy so close to home, his corrupt ally Viktor Yanukovych, was not acceptable. Ukraine, with its control of strategic pipelines, moving toward energy independence and even energy competition with Russia (it recently signed shale deals with Shell and Chevron was not acceptable.