“…Can we PLEASE have our Facebook and Big Macs back, now!”
Here is a short opinion piece/explaner written by a friend of a friend in The Guardian.
Her explanation is that Putin is surrounded by two types of people. The oligarchs and the strongmen.
The oligarchs are completely beholden to Putin. They are rich at his behest, because they get to manage industries, and steal as much as they want from them, but the industry is still owned by the state. They can be gotten rid of at any time. They confine themselves strictly to economic matters, and do not meddle in politics. With only two exceptions, they have remained silent on Ukraine.
The strongmen hold key government positions. They are extremely loyal to Putin and hostile to the West. They view sanctions as a good thing, because it decreases Western influence in Russia. They have no reason to remove Putin because “he is fulfilling their dream of a ruthless police state.”
She concludes that sanctions will not get rid of Putin, but will severely limit his military capabilities, which is good.
This was all written before a few of the strongmen were brought in for questioning. I have no idea if the rest of the group will view that as a threat, or just elimination of those not loyal enough.
This is, at this moment, the only “win” scenario for Russia. They’ve truly and genuinely already lost the war. The win is simply to unwind history by a month.
IMHO you are correct. Unfortunately the next “best case” scenario for Putin (not Russia as a whole) would be mass destruction and genocide by artillery shelling / chemical weapons / tactical nukes / starving the population / whatever other atrocities Putin can think of, and then moving in Russian colonizers and declaring victory. This seems to be what they are going to try for.
And IMHO (absolutely no snark intended btw) I believe that WW III has started but people either don’t know it or aren’t recognizing it yet.
And notwithstanding whatever is happening with the FSB and various tactical shortcomings in the field, I think that we have to assume that Russia will more than likely employ WMVs of some sort.
And we will probably have to suck up, at minimum, higher prices and various shortages, unless Putin has some sort of great epiphany.
I now also assume that each normal day could be the last.
WMVs? Tried Googling, didn’t get anything that seemed relevant.
WMDs from context
Weapons of Mass Viciousness. They are really, really vicious.
For me, in retrospect, it makes Russia’s previous global destabilization efforts much more sinister because they are not limiting themselves to disinformation and funding separatist movements. So while I would not call this WW3 yet, I do think that their previous destabilization plus the Ukraine invasion are more ominous put together than they are separately.
Thanks for ruining my weekend.
I was wondering how Putin’s health is; whether he has any conditions. He certainly portrays himself as healthy and vigourous. But just for kicks, I googled ‘how is putin’s health?’ Apparently, people are suggesting he has cancer.
This is pure speculation!
Their ‘evidence’ is that he seldom smiles anymore and looks angry. They speculate that he’s actually in pain. They point to his long table, and keeping people away from him, speculating that he has a compromised immune system and is afraid of contracting COVID.
It’s certainly a load of bilge water. (OK, not a certainty in a scientific sense.) But I would not shed any tears were he to die of COVID or cancer.
?/
Alas, WTF is wrong with me😄? Yes, WMD.
Thought that was probably what you meant, but wanted to make sure. Typos sometimes seem to spontaneously spawn on my posts, too. 
At this point I’m thinking in terms of things like inflated gas prices and the like. But what happens a month from now, or five months from now.
Sadly I think we’re stuck with this for some time, regardless of what Putin does or doesn’t do.
I keep telling people it’s because he doesn’t want them to smell the rot, or sulfur, or whatever it is he smells like. (My Bold above)
I read a theory that Putin would like to pull NATO into the conflict because it bolsters his narrative that NATO are the aggressors, and Russia must save Ukraine from the power-hungry West.
Based on what? If there is not global shooting, it is not WW III. Full stop. Proxy wars, cyber wars, propaganda wars - they’re all part of your standard ‘Cold War’, which fair to say we’re right back in again. But until the shooting actually starts between say, NATO And Russia, it ain’t a proper hot war. Definitely not a World War.
In fact if I was truly being an insufferable pedant ( 
), I’d say strictly speaking the possibility of an actual World War is not terribly likely as any fighting in this donnybrook is quite likely to be confined to Europe.
Remember back in the day when many of us thought the next major conflict was going to be between “the West” and Islamic fundamentalism? Good times, good times.
Maybe I’m just old, but “World War Three” should be reserved for when the nukes fly.
No doubt there’s a lot of truth to that. The kicker is that nothing in this is predictable. So how the hell does one conduct any sort of cogent analysis of this. It’s really IMHO a no-win situation.