Less than 24 hours after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, throngs of demonstrators have sprung up in 54 major cities across Russia. They are not there to support their dictator ruler, Vladimir Putin. They are there to show their support for the residents of Ukraine—their brothers and sisters. About 1,700 of them were arrested for “inciting a riot.” But as one lady in Moscow said to a US reporter, “we do not hate anyone in Ukraine. We love them!”

No dictator in human history ever received such an immediate and thorough renunciation of an illegal invasion.

Despite any gains the Russian dictator may see in the coming days, months, or years, his desires of ruling over an autocratic regime cultivated by deceit, disrespect, and thug control is doomed to failure. History does not support him. He appeals to the worst of human urges by relying on greed, fear, murder, imprisonment, and lies. All that runs counter to humanity’s best instincts. If the Ukrainians do not defeat him, he will have a nation of angry Russians to deal with. And if they cannot throw him out, the rest of freedom-loving humans will need to bring him down.

He was able to play the nuclear MAD card (mutually assured destruction) by holding NATO at bay with the threat of resorting to his pile of aging nuclear bombs housed in rusty delivery missiles. But if living under that Sword of Damocles taught the rest of us anything, it is how, when, where, and why to outsmart dictators in the chess game of nuclear control. His days are numbered.

I was once employed by the Dept of Defense in the science of measurement (length, mass, time, temperature, luminescence, and amount of substance) and many derivatives as they apply to weapons and weapons control systems. And, not coincidentally, that work was directed against the Soviet Union to counter their efforts with more or less the same objective. Vladimir Putin was a child at the time. Perhaps a few of his idols were out and about dreaming of murder, and deception, and cheating, and many of the other activities well-known to the KGB. I’m familiar with a whole range of weapons and how to use them to stop those who love to impose their will on others. But there was nothing in my training that dealt with murdering innocent men, women, and children. Nor did I spend one moment of thought about how, when, where or why to level a school, or bomb an orphanage or a hospital to smithereens. If there is something in the psychological profile of those who possess those propensities, I plead ignorance about how to identify them.

I read that Putin was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. What an insult to all those who earned it! I hope that the Ukrainians or the Russians find the weak link in his profile, and learn how to expunge or neutralize it—sooner, rather than later.

Meanwhile, let’s see if Putin, dubbed a “genius” by a brainless American politician during one of his incoherent diatribes on the subject of making America great again is also cast aside.. But he is a different kind of tyrant who prefers to French kiss his lovers.