And might I point out, this is further evidenced, not just in his inner circle, but even farther down his chain of command, because if that weren't the case, our CIA would have had better intelligence on this before it happened. So one has to assume, at least near the top of the chain, he's people are fiercely loyal to him.
Russia & Ukraine
- Thread starter UsualName
- Start date
As discussed, he needs another ten days or two weeks to figure out whether reducing Kviv to rubble compensates for all the rest of his blunders.
After that, he will have a window where he can declare victory - okay- this is russia, eh- you don;t necessarily need a victory to declare one. He goes home. Keeps pumping the message that he got an agreement on no Nato in Ukraine, and an agreement that the donbass and crimea will not be occupied by Ukrainian forces while and negotiations will continue- which he will market at a concession to their liberation. Lots of the folks back home will eat that shit up and the ones that don't will be branded as traitors. He is in the doghouse both internationally and back home. But once you go North Korean, you just ride it out back home and tell em whatever shiite you need to, then you develop prostate cancer, and hopefully die or something.
He will have one little window to work that but needs another week to two to decide whether he needs to. If he can win Aleppo style through artillery then he will not feel the need to settle on that. Not lookin good right now. But he needs to get that out of his system or not.
He doesnt have the troops or the money or the standing at home to work an insurgency there so he has to either depopulate the country- Aleppo and Chesnya style- or leave. Right now, he be working his depop plan. Give it another week. The Ukrainians get to "vote" on his plan.
Yeh, except the pensions for the old folks are an area where he has had some learning experiences since St. Petersburg. Much like in the US and elsewhere it sort of the third rail of politics and that is the one area where he has to at least keep some dollars flowing to hold his supporters together. The fact that millions of soviets lost their pensions when the soviet union collapsed put them in a very vulnerable postion and Putin has put something together at a low level which they are highly thankful but dependent on. So yeh, he panders to the oligarchs but he best not fuck with the pension system as his house of cards collapses. They want that potato every month, otherwise, they have zero need for him.
True.
What is more difficult for Putin though, unlike other "foreign" excursions is that many Russians do care about the Ukrainians even if Putin does not. Half the newscasters who walked out have one Ukrainian parent and people just don't believe all this shiite about them all being Nazis, even if there are some there. Some is not all by a long shot.
When Vlad spins this bullfeathers about freeing the Ukrainians from the Nazis and that they are all happy for it- lets just say that despite information blackout- they have their own opinions and connections with Ukraine. FAIL.
And those russian bodies and soldiers coming home and telling stories are a reminder - aside from the tragedy of their deaths- that russia is involved in the killing of Ukrainians. Returning soldiers bragging about or avoiding talking about killing ukrainians is not easy to navigate over at granny's house.
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Yeah but again, I would guess he could care less. It's all gonna come down to how loyal his inner circle is to him, and how loyal the ones below them are to them. And it will take way more than one to institute a coup. That's gonna be a tall order to fill. One whisper in the wrong general's ear, and the whole thing falls apart and out comes the firing squad.
The Stalingrad battle was one of the worst during WWII. Russians had 500K dead out of the total of about 3M troops in 120 days. That's about 140 KIA/day for every 100,000 troops.
If you take that 7,000 number (and that's a conservative estimate). 20 days. 200,000 (less, but let's round up) troops. That means Russians are losing about 175 KIA/day per 100,000 troops. Conservatively.
More than in the bloodiest battle in WWII.
I have stated quite clearly a couple times that I do not think that any of the opposition signs lead to his being offed or stepping down anytime soon. So I can state that again if necessary.
But that is not to say that the opposition and lack of support are not critical factors in what he may or may not bite off. He pretty well knows by now that the Ukrainians are not welcoming him for liberation as much as he thought and promoted and he pretty well knows that this is a negative for him internationally and at home. So he is savvy enough to know that he does not want to fight a long insurgency in Ukraine. He either has to do the deed with brute force or get out with some fake victory. My point, again, is that I dont think he is going to fold or be offed or removed anytime soon but negatives and opposition are not to be dismissed. They control many of his moves to come.
Ukraine plus American/European weapons = Russian meat grinder.
Look at this, it was unimaginable this would happen to the Russian military 3 weeks ago: