This acting is like a bad junior high school play–it looks extremely fake and concocted. If Putin really was that infirm this video never would have been made public. What a farce. And why?
It could well have been the best he’s been in weeks, and nobody has had the guts to tell him he looks and sounds like he is about to expire any minute.
Basically the Soviets secretly reached out to the US via back channels and asked “Hey, you wanna’ gang up on China?” and the US said no thank you. So the USSR didn’t want to fight a war that would leave them hurt and the West untouched.
Don’t look to the oligarchs to push for changes. They don’t have high life expectancy.
They are now to five deaths since the invasion started.
Keeping quiet seems to be a good way to stay breathing.
Maybe, but it was not necessary to shoot that from the side with Putin’s desk-grabbing hand not only showing, but featured.
Russian knows propaganda–they knew exactly what they wanted this video to convey.
Maybe his other side (which we can’t really see) would have been worse.
This is going to sound stupid, but…
Is Putin as crazy as Hitler was do you suspect? Possibly slightly less unhinged? If Hitler had access to nuclear weapons at the very end in Berlin, wouldn’t he have used them as a final “fuck you!” to the world before suiciding?
So I ask: do you think Putin will? Is that what it’s going to be? Don’t “dare” poke the bear too much nor back it into a corner, lest it unleash it’s nuclear arsenal in a last final show of defiance?
My wild stab: losing this war – most likely by hanging on by fingernails until Ukraine is so well armed and trained that fairly soon they will just roll them up – will not directly cause regime change. Because Putin has systematically eliminated all possible opposition. What will happen is Putin will get physically and mentally weaker, the loss in Ukraine taking a toll on what already appears to be a sick and incoherent man. Eventually he will become prey. Perhaps a China-backed coalition will stage a coup. Who knows? But it will be abrupt and probably violent, as Putin no more has the capacity to relinquish power than trump did, and has decades of practice in holding on to it. He’d like to die peacefully in bed with his hands around Russia’s neck.
agreed, Putin stays (relatively) strong by weakening all others around him …
“standing out by bringing the avg. niveau/level downwards instead of upwards”
possibly working for him (on a personal level), while making russia weaker all around … and the sorry state the russian armed forces are in, is testament to this.
That’s the problem with countries like Russia that are obsessed with having a “strong leader”. They don’t realize that strength is relative, and that a strong leader usually means a weak country.
According to this interview with a Russian news media person with good military sources, there is general support for the war in the military, and in fact for going way beyond what Putin had announced, like trying to take all of Ukraine, expanding Russia’s borders to Poland, and so on.
My takeaway is, don’t expect the military to look for regime change.
I saw this article today and although I’d love it to be true, an actual coup seems like a very specific thing:
So this is underway? Troops are kicking down Putin’s bedroom door right now? Somehow I feel as though that is not going to be tomorrow’s headline.
There is more gossip in the article than the typical issue of Us Weekly. I’m surprised it doesn’t include a list of “10 Ways to Disable a T-72 Tank With a Hair Scrunchie (You’ll Never Guess #7!)”.
Stranger
Speculation that senior Russian military leaders are being suspended or even arrested, but so far, just speculation, no confirmation:
And a public attack on the competence of the Minister of Defence by a former commander of separatist forces in eastern Ukraine:
Possibly a bad thing - ISTM, lots of countries who go to war after a long peace end up with crap at the top of the their military. Rapid promotion of folks who prove themselves on the battlefield corrects that.
Of course, I’m not sure that Russia is having enough success in Ukraine to identify competent leaders, so it may not work out for them.
Especially with the death rate for general officers in theatre.
There’s also the point that if failure doesn’t just mean demotion but arrest or imprisonment, that can’t be good for morale.
Maybe among some in the military, like the brass that’s sufficiently high up that they don’t need to be anywhere near the front. The actual guys at the sharp end of the spear know they’re getting their butts kicked, though, and can’t be happy about it.
I posted that article in the Invasion thread yesterday. I noted this [emphasising my final sentence]:
A coup to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin is underway and can’t be stopped, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence chief.
Also:
Putin has spent decades making his regime “coup-proof.”… [T]he existence of the FSB, the FSO, and The Rosgvardia serve to protect him.
In summary: A coup will take out Putin. Unless it doesn’t.
I think what we’re seeing is a different problem. In some countries, the military becomes politicized. The regime promotes officers for their political loyalty rather than for their military competence.