Interesting (if true) - Economist is in the major leagues in terms of reliability. There is a “They”, and it’s probably the intelligence services. And the actual method would probably be less dignified than a hanging.
Not only is there a “they”, but it says Putin is entirely self-aware about the situation, and that he understands that he is personally accountable for this war.
This isn’t an optimistic post - frankly the grim truth has always seemed that this industrial murder festival will go on as long as he does. Russia of the last hundred years has been essentially a crime syndicate. To say he’s a Tsar kind of misses the point - the REAL power is the intelligence servies, and the Tsar-proxy is kind of a figurehead.
If he said this, it’s very telling. He knows the war is going badly, he knows his life is personally depenent on the outcome, he fears “they”, he wants to live and he doesn’t know what to do. Seems highly likely he’ll conitnue to escalate until…? Russian history suggests that when things don’t go well, they purge the leader and put all the blame on him in retirement. Don’t think Putin will get the “Kruschev Dacha Retirement” package - he’s done WAY too much damage.
Hopefully “They” are paying attention too, and are getting tired of the lack of progress.
That’s the point. When he goes, then we can go after Trump, Xi, Netanyahu, Kim J Un, etc. They can all go together.
One would certainly hope so. The common denominator with all these vile fuckwits is that they are locked into corruption and 20th century thinking. I’ve tried to understand the Ukraine invasion as the last gasp of the Cold War - a 30 year vanity revenge project from shitheads who can’t let go of grievances. Including the russians who never let their psyche accept the collapse of the USSR, and clung to this notion that “if we HAD ever fought NATO, Stronk Russia would have won, because we are so awesome and the west are feckless pussies”.
They are a failure as a society, they are trapped in medieval brutalism, they have 4th rate allies that only run on bribes and they are a fading power similar to how the Ottoman Empire slowly collapsed over 300 years by losing it’s western colonies, losing wars it should have won and getting an increasingly poor crop of leadership over time. At least the USSR had a philosophical veneer of communism that could generate some meaningful contrarian ideological allies around the world. The obvious petromafia gangster state that is the modern Russian Federation has no political credibility at all - it’s a brazen crime syndicate with no laws, no institutions and no rules. Only power. So no wonder anyone with an entrepreneurial brain or noble ambitions has already fled the country. It’s gangsters all the way down, which isn’t any kind of basis to run a modern country.
The best thing that could happen for the world is for russia to complete it’s collapse into a rump state from the Urals to the Ukrainian border, and from Murmansk to rostov - like how the Ottomans collapsed into a more homogenous Turkish Republic after losing Africa, Europe and Arabia. They’ll remain a regional power, but their delusions of being a global superpower are drawing to a close. I think we’re closer to the end of Putin and Russia than many realize. Being defeated in Ukraine and the limitations on their power going forward will supercharge that collapse.