Last week was Thanksgiving in the United States, when it appears to be traditional to eat one’s body weight in turkey, to stuff oneself regardless of the costs to diets or consciousness. At a time when the Internet was, in the wake of the shooting down of a Russian bomber, equally stuffed with “what’s Putin having for Thanksgiving? Turkey” memes, a similar struggle between head and heart must be taking place in Moscow. How far will Putin be driven by his emotions, how far by rational calculation? And do we understand either?

There is no doubt that Putin was genuinely enraged by the incident. Even accepting Ankara’s account — and it probably is accurate in this respect — the Russian Su-24 bomber was in its airspace for just 17 seconds, cutting across a thin and anomalous outcrop of Turkish territory which protrudes into Syria. No attempt was made to fire warning shots, nor to force the plane down. Generally, firing on an intruding plane is the last recourse, if it looks as if it poses some direct threat. But the Russian jet was heading out of Turkish airspace and it would have been easy simply for the much more agile F-16 interceptors to have escorted it out, before some diplomatic protest was logged. Especially if it is true, as he claims, that Turkish President Erdogan personally gave the order to fire — in those 17 seconds — then they must have been waiting for the opportunity and spared no time in taking it. Whether to warn Moscow not to take Turkey lightly, to protect Its own proxies amongst the rebels, or to complicate efforts to get the Russians involved in the regional political process — or all of the above — then this was an ambush ready to be sprung the next time a Russian plane wandered across the border. (Something that happens all the time, not least with Turkish planes intruding into Greek airspace.)

Putin called it a “stab in the back” and people close to him reported that he was in a cold fury. The predictable diplomatic protests were made — although minister for foreign affairs Sergei Lavrov delivered a low-key performance that may itself have been a bit to calm the situation — and advanced S-400 missile systems were rushed to Syria in a pointed warning.

Equally predictable were the economic sanctions and the moves to strangle Russian tourism to Turkey. This will definitely have an impact: Russia is the country’s second largest trading partner and Russian tourism brings in $6.5 billion a year. However, in a depressingly familiar pattern, this will also hit Russians, especially poorer Russians. Turkey has been an important source of fruit, vegetable and cheap textiles and clothes, while with Egypt now closed to them because of the Metrojet incident, Turkey was the remaining affordable and accessible destination for holiday makers looking for some sun and sea.

In the echoing halls of his palace at Odintsovo, none of this is likely to bother Putin directly. Likewise, the elites both greater and lesser still have the resources to holiday in the likes of San Moritz or Karlovy Vary, respectively. But nonetheless they surely cannot be wholly unaware of the impact this will have on ordinary Russians.

How far can the quality of Russians’ lives be salami-sliced away before they begin not just to resent, but also to resist? Furthermore, every time government policy forces people to choose either more expensive or less appealing options, there is a frictional cost to the economy as a whole. In crude terms, Moscow could end up fighting an economic war with the world to the last Russian.

How many of Putin’s initiatives, after all, make sense in true, rational terms? I’d suggest there are essentially three categories, three Putins. There are those decisions that come from Putin the Rational, moves which to outsiders appear comprehensible and logical. The Syrian adventure, for example, came as a surprise but is actually a shrewd, if risky geopolitical gambit. 

Then there are those moves which probably have a compelling logic — when viewed strictly through the Kremlin windows. After all, the difference in the ways Putin and his Western counterparts describe the world is not just a question of rhetoric. It is also a reflection of the way Putin, steeped in his own and his country’s distinctive experiences, isolated from the realities of Russian life, and surrounded — protected or confined? — by a narrowing circle of like-minded cronies, genuinely sees things differently. We may, for example, deride the notion that the Ukrainian Maidan was some CIA coup, but I cannot but feel that this leader, Putin the Misled, quite possibly truly believes this. I have certainly met figures within the security apparatus to whom this is a matter of fact, and they no doubt pass these beliefs up the chain of command.

And then there are, shall we say, the affairs of the heart, the times when Putin appears driven not by his head but by his emotions. The seizure of Crimea was probably one such case; of course, there was considerable domestic advantage, but the costs in terms of economic and political isolation surely outweighed this. Certainly the half-thought-through decision to ride the wave and continue into the Donbas could not have been anything but the outcome of triumphalism and arrogance on the part of Putin the Emotional. As with Crimea, the military and the foreign policy establishment do not even seem to have been consulted, no serious preparations were made, no cost-benefit analysis generated. This was instinct and passion, not careful statecraft.

So this is often the problem for outsiders trying to predict Russia’s next move. Will it come from the heart or the head? And even if the head, will it be a decision that seems rational in terms of the way the Kremlin understands the world, even if not ours? We know too little about Putin’s own mind these days - you can learn a certain amount from his public pronouncements, but only so much - and even less about what he is being told by those briefing and advising him.

And this is a particular problem with regards to Turkey, where one arrogant strongman - Erdogan - appears to have assumed that he had the measure of another. After all, were Putin minded to, he could go much further that his current responses. We could see weapons and money flowing to the Kurds, and extreme political groups. We could see provocations and bloodshed in a country in which even beforehand, Moscow was not shy about sending in assassins to murder Chechen rebel fundraisers. We could see attempts to provoke Turkey into a cross-border intrusion of its own into Syria, to give the Russians an excuse to even the score.

All of these would be counter-productive in the extreme, risking conflict with a country whose leadership has shown itself much more willing to take risks and show its teeth than its European partners,and yet which is also part of NATO. It would also undo much of the successful diplomatic work done to date, ending any hope for some kind of coalition in the Middle East that could end Russia’s diplomatic isolation. One could hope that Putin the Rational understands this. The trouble is that this may be that’s not how Putin the Misled sees it — or maybe Putin the Emotional is just angry enough not to care.