“Hippo King” — a recent episode of PBS’ “Nature,” a show I find difficult to watch but am nonetheless drawn to — tells the story of a hippopotamus from birth through violent maturity to his becoming the primary bull in his pod and eventual death at age 35. In a key moment, the young hippo, on his own for the first time, is eyed by a pride of lionesses. But they turn their attention to a swift gazelle that flashes before them until they attack and devour it as our hippo protagonist watches and moves on, perhaps relieved that it was not his day.

I find myself thinking of that hippo of late as Passover approaches and Holy Week begins in a saason that has always symbolized death and rebirth. Why do we suffer? Well, I think we know why we suffer — OPS (other people’s selfishness) for one thing and then there are those calamities the flesh is heir to that we generally have no control over, like many illnesses.

With the ground war raging in Ukraine having been played to a standstill — thank God, although the shelling continues — many have attempted to analyze its sole instigator, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have considered the so-called encroachment of NATO, a defensive organization that would probably not exist without Russian aggression; the supposed failure of American presidents to read the 800-pound gorilla in the room; the obliviousness of a Europe that reportedly saw Russia as nothing but a giant gas station with onion domes; the alleged corruption of the former Soviet satellites that Putin would seek to crush to corral — Chechnya, Crimea, Ukraine.

But as with any analysis of his former BFF, President Donald J. Trump, the political with Putin must begin with the personal. As with Trump, Putin is a narcissist. The difference is that while Trump is an ultimately ineffective narcissist — too intellectually lazy and disorganized to be Machiavellian — Putin is the worst kind of narcissist, a wily malignant nihilist.