This is somewhat simplistic, but I cannot help but feel that at least a part of this current drama is about giving a Boris Yeltsin variant back to the west.
IMO (I’m no expert by any means): I think this is about Putin wanting to leave a legacy. He’s getting long in the tooth now, and wants to be remembered for reshaping Russia’s borders.
My pet theory is that Putin has received a diagnosis of some kind. One that has made him accelerate the actualisation of his dreams of Soviet reunification.
Putin's whimsy. No other reason, no rational nation state with complex motivations lurking in the machinery of decision. This is 100% Putin with a wild hair up his ass, wanting to return Russia to a semblance of its soviet territories.
This is the issue; where is the end game here for Putin, I can't see a way out for him and the people who surround him.
My psychological analysis of him basically says Putin is the king of the gangsters and he knows as such he needs to keep everyone scared and also demonstrate his power. The way you get to be Putin is to behave in the most extreme way possible when crossed, this pattern is likely to continue one way or another.
We should seriously think about something we can do to give the gangster a way out (appease his ego while he in return withdraws). I know this sounds weak but the other options are really very bad, a disconnected Russia with loads of nukes with a leader with an increasingly extreme disposition that blames the West for all his problems (because Putin has stopped being able to be wrong). Tell me this situation I've outlined is fine because to me it certainly means sabotaging of the West at the least and nuclear war at worst?
That he will be replaced by people in the Kremlin is extremely unlikely in my opinion and who is to say his replacement will be anything less than consistent with the Cold War mentality Putin seems to be spouting.
To me, too. If nothing else, it's handing Putin an excuse to escalate on a silver platter. That seems unwise, even if he is stretched rather thin at the moment.
I think this is a circus, where Putin and Prigozhin are completely aligned, and the point of that show is to make one point: if the West doesn't like Putin, there are options that are much worse.
I think the only thing that makes sense is Putin's unchecked power (inside Russia) has essentially made him not give a damn anymore. He's rich and powerful and reaching end of his life. He might be physically ill - we don't know. And this is his chance to try to rebuild the USSR consequences be damned.
Putin doubling down and still losing seems like a chance. Probably naively, I believe it is a chance for encompassing reforms. For the last Soviet remnants to be flushed out. I suspect almost all Russians below say 40 years of age are just done. They gaze west or onto their smartphones and see what live can be like. Not perfect either, but a huge step up. Yet the reigning elite is too entrenched still, which a decisive, including economical, defeat of Russia in Ukraine might change. Here is to hoping.
(Naturally, the West also has an 'entrenched elite'; it's always greener, yadda yadda. Yet average western life is objectively much better than current Russian)
I know it is enough to fill several books but I don’t see how we went from Gorbachev to this.
I’ll hold hope that the Princes will be less homicidal maniacs. I think there is something extra psychotic about Putin that you don’t find in normal people.
Pretty sad, looks like he's turning Russia into another North Korea, and once that trigger is pulled we know how well that ends. I feel a lot of sympathy for the Russian People.
Yeah, I would agree with that. In my limited observational capacity as a Russian, I would also add that Western notions of Putin being toppled in a popular coup are, while adorable, profoundly facile; the repressive capacity of an autocratic siloviki state is greatly underestimated in this fairy tale. You ain't seen _nothin_ yet.
A third option that I don't think should be discounted is that Russia falls apart politically, either from assassination or a coup.
A status quo is usually tolerable, but the man is acting unpredictably and really rocking the boat right now, that's rarely beneficial for a leader's longevity, not even among despots.
As much as I abhor Putin, he sort of has a point, if you look at the geopolitical history since the breakup of the Soviet Union. At the time, the US and western Europe were quick to bring many of the former republics into their fold, then into NATO (despite promising not to do so), which Putin sees as an affront and a threat to Russia's sovereignty, which in turn is why he finally invaded Ukraine (twice!) as well as Georgia: He will not tolerate NATO at his doorstep.
As for why Putin still sees the West as the enemy, I don't think we can analyze Putin outside the context of the Soviet Union. He doesn't quite want to bring it back, but it's abundantly clear from his statements that he's never abandoned the idea that Russia has a claim to Eastern Europe (if not outright as its ruler, then certainly as a cultural protector), that he sees Western culture as encroaching on Russia's. From his perspective the West is out to get Russia. That's a legitimate geopolitical concern, of course; all states desire to protect their sovereignty and sphere of influence. What's unusual is that Russia has been able to wield so much military and cultural power relative to its small size, which is why we're even talking about it. I think it's incredibly scary just how much better Putin is at playing this game than the seemingly gullible Western powers.
Where it gets tricky is Putin's other side as a cold-hearted authoritarian gangster keeping a tenuous network of equally gangster oligarchs in place. If Russia ever becomes democratic and its judicial system restored, Putin would end up going the way of Saddam Hussein. (He's not going to get the Idi Amin treatment.) So you can't see Putin's political moves exclusively through the lens of statesmanship either; in choosing to be a ruthless kleptocrat, he's ruled out the possibility of a peaceful succession, and that's yet another complex factor driving the fate of Russia.
This may be missing the purpose of Putin interference in western politics. He doesn't need to influence it in one specific direction or another. He only needs to turn it into a shit show. This is because his purpose is entirely to do with the domestic situation inside Russia. He needs western democracies to become shamblolic in order to perpetrate the myth that everything is fine in Russia, because democracy is a joke anyway, so no need to look behind the curtain.
I am not cheering it one but I think it may be sadly inevitable, and it scares the shit out of me. Putin thinks he can't back down with out loosing face and looking weak which from his prospective is a danger to him from both internal and external threats.
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