The walking dead Biden, now consigned to oblivion, is a telling example of how an experienced and overall smart politician (and he is experienced, having held top government jobs back in the Soviet period) gradually turned into a senile old dude divorced from reality.

When I had meetings with him, he didn’t yet have dementia. What did catch my attention was his unhealthy interest in Ukraine, even though he explained it to me by acting on Obama’s instructions.

Over time, those instructions turned into an obsession – the transformation facilitated by political mistakes, plain corruption, and poor judgment stemming from historical ignorance and failure to appreciate the nature of “Ukraineness.” At some point, the old man went off the rails and essentially unleashed a war between the collective West and Russia, which almost led to a nuclear exchange with NATO.

He’s been clearly out of it lately. While it’s true that this war benefits the US economically, political costs and the real danger of a fatal conflict are far more important. It is something the old dude was not prepared for. This is a case where the head of a major world power lost control of the situation completely, resulting in a crushing electoral defeat for the Democrats. While Biden’s problem was his confused state of mind, the fault of his Administration was deliberately leaving a terrible legacy of crisis on the Russian track to their successors.

The time bombs of Biden-era decisions will keep ticking for a very long time, which is why communication will be extremely difficult. The normalization of Russian-American relations will take decades.

As things stand, I think it is fundamentally impossible. And frankly speaking, it’s unclear whether we actually need it.