RussianPresident Vladimir Putinis feeling "cornered like a rat" as his Ukrainianinvasion lingers into its third week, a former U.S. intelligence officer told Fox News Digital, and his personal history suggests he will continue to lash out in order to regain the upper hand.

Rebekah Koffler, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency agent and author of "Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America", told Fox News Digital on Saturday that an excerpt from Putin’s 2000 autobiography "First Person" detailing growing up in a dilapidated Leningrad apartment can be applied to his record as the Russian leader and his current invasion of Ukraine.

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Putin describes in his book having to traverse several rat infested floors to get to his childhood apartment and that one day he wrote that he grabbed a stick and chased a large rat into a corner. When the rat realized he was trapped, he attacked young Putin forcing him to run away in a moment that apparently impacted the future Russian president.

Koffler said that the childhood story about the rat, and other stories Putin has approved to be told about his personal life, are a conscious effort to convey to the West that he will always strike back when trapped.

"He wants people to know that when cornered, he will be fighting," Koffler told Fox News. "He will not be surrendering."

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In another biography, "Vladimir Putin: Life History", Putin is quoted as saying that he learned through neighborhood fights as a child that "you have to fight to the finish line in every fight" and "you need to assume that there is no retreat."

Putin’s predicament began when, according to Koffler, he "miscalculated" two major issues related to invading Ukraine by not factoring in the Ukrainian people’s will to fight and the role technology would play in bringing the images of destruction to households across the world.

(editor：)