Who knows. At his age he probably has a few screws loose.
The problem is that most dictators like to surround themselves with "yes men", who tend to skew the reality.
It was the case with our Romanian comunist dictator. People were starving back in the late 80', yet his advisers probably said to him that everything was fine.
In his last speech, adresing the nation, in front of our revolutionary protesters, who numbered a couple of hundred thousands, he was so out of touch that he said that he is going to give 100 (roughly 27 dollars, at the time) Romanian Leu extra to every people in the workforce in the country, discounting the fact that you didn't have any food to buy with it.
His speech amplified the revolution and 3 days later he was cought, trieled and shot to death.
Fingers crossed that putin goes the way of the dodo sooner rather than later.