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.
They won’t hang him
… If he shoots his own head off first.
They’d also hang his inner circle and generals, unless Vlad were to have an accident with one of Moscow’s notoriously unsafe windows.
One of those guys is the one most likely to hang him.
🤞
Do you ever think of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group and whether he could’ve actually ended the war in June 2023? Maybe if hadn’t done the rebellion then and waited until today where the Russian public has begun really feeling the consequences.
Thanks for asking. My thoughts - the most telling thing about the Wagner rebellion is that while nobody joined him - nobody stopped him either. The intelligence services called up all the Wagner leadership and said we will kill all of your family in 24h if you don’t stop now. You know - a good guys move. The stretngth and weakness of an authoritarian dictatorship is that the people aren’t particularly keen to die for you - they just want to know who’s in charge.
Wagner would have been intentionally liquidated or relocated to Africa by now - they’d fulfilled their purpose. If I put on my Prighozin hat, he would have been better to hold Rostov and Belgorod hostage just as his leadership’s families were. Not that Moscow gives a wet donkey fart about the citizens of Rostov and Belogorod, but - they need those cities to run their Donbas invasion and the logisticis to keep Crimea, and project power into the Mediterranean and Africa. Priggy was a dead man the second he turned his wheels east, but he would have lived longer had he not marched towards Moscow.
I think he realized too late that he had been used, and that all his undeserved wealth was going to be siphoned away.
Dude probably could have ended the war after a week or two, taken a portion of the east, and called it a day. So much discussion of giving Putin off-ramps back then.
This was back when Germany was supplying nothing more deadly than helmets and all of Russia’s navy was still floating.
Ain’t that the truth. Putting on your Black Hearted Ghoul hat for a moment - the smart thing for him to do would have been to pause and get firm concessions on the Donbas territory they already controlled plus Crimea. Something prior to the 2022 Kharkiv counter attack, annouce a ceasefire, say that you’d made your point that they are serious about Russian boundaries. They could have claimed they punched NATO in the nose and showed them to be toothless - which they were until it became clear Ukraine wasn’t going to slip away into history. Reserve your future strength, not showcase how terrible and now ultimately spent their army is. All those billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of men and machines that he’d still have to threaten the West with. Now, the west is financially and materially invested in Ukraine - disengagement will be slow, gradual, and only in the face of a Ukraine-friendly settlement.
But - they’re greedy and stupid, and only know how to escalate. Because they’re gangsters, not strategic military geniuses. It’s often said that Putin is a chess player - that’s horseflop. He’s a poker player who always bluffs, punches down on opponents he doesn’t think will hit back, and counts on his fat chip stack scaring others. Well - now he has blown that stack. His own hubris didn’t allow for a long version of this war.
And now what? Lost the Black Sea fleet. Lost 1.5 million men. Lost their entire soviet hardware inheritance. Became junior partners to China. Lost effective control of Crimea and the Black Sea. Lost allies in Syria, Armenia, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Venezuela. Lost their mischief-making franchise Wagner. Lost their AWACS fleet. Lost 1/2 of their strategic bombers. Lost their 30-year war chest of oil revenues. Lost their primary energy export markets to europe. Lost their ecommerce industry. Lost their oil and gas infrastructure. Lost any young Russian men smart enough to make their way out of the country prior to mobilization. Lost any relationship with Ukraine forever. Lost their fearsomeness. Enlarged NATO. The list goes on.
China has done this kind of short, snap, “prove a point” invasion several times in the last 75 years - against the USSR, Korea, Vietnam, India. China are smart enough to see that the threat of war is worth more than the more uncertain realization of it.
That is an exceptionally good piece of writing. And the insight on Putin is my favourite:
It’s often said that Putin is a chess player - that’s horseflop. He’s a poker player who always bluffs, punches down on opponents he doesn’t think will hit back, and counts on his fat chip stack scaring others.
oh you with the flattery. cheers.
Fucking beautiful. I mean it.
I respect when folks can take a step back and look at it through the eyes of the “bad guy” and say “this is where they went wrong.”
Fucking beautiful piece of writing right there.
You are very kind! But my two cents isn’t chest thumping triumph in the near term. Quite the opposite. Sort of.
The point of the Economist article is that he fully understands it’s going badly, he understands he is not conquering Ukraine, but the scary part is is completely commited to - put simply - getting more in order to stay alive. It would be better for the world if he continued bashing his brains in against Ukraine chasing a delusional theory of victory.
The fact that they’re unable to advance in Ukraine GREATLY increases the chances he attacks the Baltics, and I mean soon. Like, in the next 1-2 months. And the point of that attack isn’t to take and hold territory.
It’s to try and salvage exposing NATO Article 5 as toothless words on a page. This window of a hollow ‘victory’ is a sweet spot of Trump still holding all the levers of power in the US until the midterms, and the relative unpreparedness of strong, unilateral NATO respons to an attack on Latvia, Lithuania and/or Estonia. Most serious minded thinkers agree that even a U.S. exempt response by European NATO partners will smash the current version of the Russian army in the case of a Baltic invasion.
But that’s not the point. Trump holds the U.S. out of Baltic attack, some Danes, Canadians stationed there die. Finland and Poland probably say “fuck it” and immediately implement air strikes because clearly it’s better to fight an inevitable opponent in someone else’s yard instead of your own. What do Paris, Berlin, London and Rome do? Who knows. They don’t have a lot of new capabilities to offer Ukraine, just more of what they’re already providing. I don’t see those large European NATO forces putting boots on the ground in the Baltics, at least not right away while they assess what Crazy ol’ Vlad is doing. Maybe they sink a few ships in the Baltic fleet and seize more shadow fleet vessels. Trump is going to die - soon. And he might be neutered politically before then. It’s urgent that Russia move while their armies are deployed and he exists to interfere with a unified Western response to their brazen attacks.
Point is - Russia is already pot committed to this war. It has become existential for their miserable hell on earth petromafia project. A defeated, post Putin Russia is headed for a power struggle, and EVERYONE understands that. They have more pragmatic cruelty unifying them than we give them credit for. Russia won’t be any stronger than they are right now for another centrury.
All that to say - he hasn’t made his last move. He will probably invade the Baltics in the next 1-2 months, regardless of a military outcome, and claim the prize is shattering NATO unity and further eroding U.S. partisan politics. Whether that would be enough for “They” to let him live is highly debatable, as that seems a goal of personal vengeance more than it does an issue of Russian strategic triumph.
Moreover, invading the Baltics essentially means much less pressure on the Ukrainian lines, and gives the UA options to think about their next steps. Opening even a brief new offensive will suck scarce resources away from the current fronts. Whatever support Ukraine is getting today might be enhanced signficantly if Russia invades the Baltics, even after that portion of the attack is brief.
But what do I know? What’s your thoughts?
If he can hold on until the French and/or German elections, he can flip a big chunk of NATO.
That’s the point. When he goes, then we can go after Trump, Xi, Netanyahu, Kim J Un, etc. They can all go together.
That’s ridiculous he won’t be hanged. He’ll be defenestrated.
Better out the door of an airplane with no parachute from 20,000 feet. Livestreamed with telephoto lenses.
Let him really think about it on the way down. And let anyone else who wants to use power and money this way a preview of what will happen to them.
My guess is his death will be personal and quiet. Poison. He’ll be blamed almost coloquially for this whole nasty affair “you understand the game, Vladimir. Now drink your tea”. And then there will be an awful power struggle in Russia along ethno-corporate warlord lines. The winning faction will take considreable time to consolidate their power. Total mystery who that might be, given that his dictatorship cult has deliberately forbidden faction cores that might compete with his own to exist. Lots of power brokers will pick the wrong side and end up dead.
Things will have to get very, very bad again, like the 90’s, before an appetite for an all-powerful national savior strongman emerges again. But glass half full - during that power struggle, Russia will not really have the jam to run state level invasions against it’s neighbours and it will be weaker than it is today when it’s done. Highly likely that Dagestan, Chechnya, Yakutia all break away and Russia shrinks into a rump state similiar to how the Ottoman empire lost its colonies over a long time frame and ended up with it’s current configuration in Turkey.
Unlikely we get a Gaddhafi style bayonet enema on video or a Ceaucescu gutter bleed-out. Russia’s way is to scapegoat the last guy, then pretend to be a society again for a while.
There’s nothing worse than an animal backed into a corner. If Pootin really things this, he’ll do anything to win, maybe even things like attacking NATO or ordering that an atom bomb be dropped on Ukraine. Let’s just hope the upper class in Russia forces him to the end the war before that happens.
Not to be too literal - but there are many things worse than an animal backed into a corner. Like an animal running wild thorugh your kitchen. On balance, this entire affair is horror. But it was always going to happen and i’ll take the current state of affairs over the alternatives.
Dangerous animals need to be killed sometimes.
🤣 good one
Yeah… that new round of mobilization just seems more and more like it’s going to happen.
Agreed but I don’t think they’ll just pick more bodies with the same war aims. Getting 400k more troops gives him another 12 months or so of burn rate. And wars don’t end when the other side gets to zero troops - collapses hapen when enough people understand that defeat is inevitable and tomorrow’s planned assault isn’t worth dying for. They might be at or near that point already.
Even at Russian standards of mobilization, it takes 2-6 months to get fresh bodies at scale into the line. Those new recruits who are right now working in tire shops, mines, IT offices and coffee shops will be less effective than the low-functioning grunts being blow into spaghetti-O’s in blasted puddles of rainwater and crushed concrete right now. They have less equipment, shit leadership, no experience - which means they’ll die faster. Much faster. And these are not volunteers - these will be conscripts that the Russians didn’t want to tap into before. Society’s sensitivity to their lives being pissed away so that a black hearted gangster ghoul doens’t have to say he was wrong is much higher than the in-it-for-the-money slobs that came before.
If they announced mobilization today, they will endure several more months of crushing losses, oil and gas infrastructure and warehouse destruction, increased shortages and inflation way before the first reluctant mobik is blown out of his boots by ukrainian drones.
Then what? Mobilization by itself doesn’t change the outcome of this war. They’re going to do something else wild and provocative. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Anything else is just buying a small slice of time.
