> the demonization of Putin is a stand-in for foreign policy analysis
We tend to personalize nations, to the extent that we refer to the nation using the name of its leader. So, for example, "Putin invaded Ukraine". In fact the first time Putin even visited Ukraine was more than a year after the invasion.
What we generally mean by "Putin" is what during the Cold War was referred to as "The Kremlin", roughly Soviet/Russian central government. "Kremlinologist" was a term that referred to people whose job was figuring out what was going on in the Kremlin; civilians like me were encouraged to regard Kremlinology as impossible in principle, like Astrology, or reading tea-leaves.
I don't pretend to know what's going on in the Kremlin. But generals get pushed aside, and then re-hired somewhere else; officials get publicly humiliated on TV. I think it's faily clear that Putin is not in any sense an absolute dictator. He's the leader of a very authoritarian, militaristic government, in a country that is traditionally very authoritarian and militaristic.
I mean, I do think Putin's bonkers. But not based on his actions; I suppose his government's actions are the actions of the leadership clique, the "siloviki", i.e. the former KGB/GRU colonel-generals, turned oligarchs and government officials. I don't think Putin could have ordered this invasion without consensus of some kind in his clique. If his power were that concentrated, he would by now have ordered full mobilization, but it isn't, and he can't. [Edit] The reason I think he's bonkers is the things he says, especially in "On the Historic Unity of the Russian and Ukrainian People". But even that wasn't invented by him; those ideas come from "philosophers" like Alexander Dugin.
The handling of the Prigozhin Mutiny is evidence of that (Prigozhin is not siloviki, and was never KGB/GRU). If Putin were an absolute dictator, Prigozhin would have died the day after the mutiny, either shot somewhere very public, or poisoned using chemicals only made by the Russian government.