Putin doesn't fear the west. He fears his own people.

Whatever the truth of MH17, the shootdown adds to a burden of unexplained matters that complicate any Putin plan for a blissful retirement: The deaths of journalists, critics and even the odd inconvenient mentor, the killings of legislators Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin who were investigating the greatest mystery of all, the apartment block bombings in 1999 that slaughtered 293 Russians in their beds and cemented Mr. Putin’s rise to power.

At the same time Mr. Putin’s position at home has been buttressed by intimations that the West considers him a man it can do business with, even a bulwark against chaos. The signs of sotto voce approval have been hard to miss even lately: The way former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder laid himself out to protect Mr. Putin after the Crimea grab. The undiminished parade of Western business leaders to join Mr. Putin last month at the World Petroleum Congress in Moscow. Most of all, his regime’s continued and deep reliance on BP and Exxon-Mobil to advance its energy development goals.

This has been our fifth column in nine years with the words “Putin puzzle” in the title. Two years ago, we asked if Mr. Putin might have an act of creative statesmanship in him, fashioning a graceful exit from power and into some lavish tax-haven exile. He evidently doesn’t. Even with the airliner shootdown, the U.S. and Europe are likely loath to destabilize his regime fatally. The next question is whether the Russian people have a creative act in them, or whether they are prepared supinely and mutely to share whatever fate Mr. Putin, in his selfishness, decides to inflict on his country for his own preservation.