Putin is the most mentioned name in the world's media today

Vladimir Putin has achieved at least one thing out of his suspected plan to invade neighbouring Ukraine any day now. He is the most talked about leader in the world and every president, prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister from the western alliance has either been on the phone to him or made statements about him or visited him in the Kremlin to beg him not to do anything rash. That's a helluva change for Putin compared with the previous eight years. Well, since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Putin had become so isolated from the world that no one wanted to be associated with him. Even Donald Trump who started off his presidency by advocating friendship with the Russian leader didn't take long to go off him. Biden has had a couple of recent chats with Putin and they seemed to sort of get along but nothing came of it and since the alarming ratcheting up of Russia's military strength along the Ukrainian border all that has emerged from the White House have been warnings and ultimatums. But while Biden seems to be in no hurry to get together again with Putin face to face, everyone else is rushing to Moscow to speak to him or his officials and then pose in Red Square to show folks back home that they are doing a fine job in trying to stop an invasion. Well, that's what Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, did after meeting with her counterpart in Moscow, Sergey Lavrov. Wearing a very fetching Russian-style bear hat as well. Putin must be tinkled pink. One moment he is cold-shouldered Cold-War style and then he is the leader everyone wants to chat to. It's probably all a waste of time because Putin will do what Putin will do. He already knows and taken into his calculations what the West will do by way of retaliation if he does order an invasion, so he doesn't need all these anxious-looking western VIPs turning up on his doorstep but it must still give him a lot of satisfaction. The meeting he is probably looking forward to most is his session with Olaf Scholz, the new German chancellor, because it will give him an opportunity to drive a wedge between Germany and her allies in Nato. During the meeting set for February 15 I anticipate Putin will use all his cunning and charm, nurtured after years of being a KGB officer, to persuade Scholz to return to Berlin with a feeling of sympathy and support for the Russian leader's paranoia about Nato's expansion eastwards. I am becoming more and more convinced, unfortunately, that the Scholz meeting will effectively be the last before Putin finally decides to ignore all the western entreaties and go for the invasion option. He knows he's not going to get any promise that Ukraine will never be allowed to join Nato - such an unbelievably stupid and short-sighted and dangerously brazen offer originally made by alliance leaders in 2008 - so the only way forward for the most talked-about leader on the planet right now is to seize Ukraine. Only then will Kyiv be barred from joining the western alliance. In Putin's view. I fear it's a done deal. Unless of course Joe Biden blinks and says ok ok, Ukraine should not be a member of the alliance. Putin I think has already judged that Biden wouldn't dare.