And it's futile to hope that Putin will change his habits - it's already too late. The Russian economy will need quite a lot of time to recover from the sanctions imposed against it, regardless of what Russian propaganda says about the matter. I read a news article recently stating that China is paying the lowest possible price for Russian gas. Xi Jinping, being the vulture that he is, will not pass an opportunity to feast on the rotting body of Putin's Russia.
It seems that Putin and his clique care only for their own safety and prosperity. Some people have argued that Putin simply doesn't know what to do - but I say that he is well aware of what he's doing and what are the risks of his actions. The fact that this elderly man has access to nuclear weapons - if they haven't been stolen and sold to India - doesn't make me worried, but instead impatient to see what will happen next. Will the normal world allow Putin to go all in? NATO, the UN and OSCE should remember the saying about the monkey with a grenade (or in this case a nuclear briefcase).
The funniest thing in all this is that it doesn't even matter who will be at the helm of Putin's Russia. If the Russian people won't change their attitude towards their nation, everyday life and Russia's neighboring states, it won't matter which monkey is holding the grenade - an old chekist or some communist - Russia will remain the same, i.e. an aggressive and poor country.
Any war is a battle for resources between two entities. And Putin doesn't understand that a "victory" that ends with the aggressive expansion of Russia doesn't benefit Russia, but instead brings it even more to its knees. While the normal world is sharing resources, Russia is spilling blood for them.
An example: during the past seven years Russia, being a superpower, a nuclear-weapon state and the country that was the first to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, hasn't been able to solve the issue of drinkable water supply to the occupied Crimea. Instead, Putin is expressing territorial claims to the other "quasi-states" that gained independence after the collapse of the USSR.
Source: Putin voices territorial claims to "quasi-states" during his speech at the Luzhniki Stadium commemorating the annexation of Crimea. Doesn't this remind you of the small man with a moustache, whose name still can't be mentioned in Merkel's Germany?
.youtube.com/watch?v=AJl6vLHK3Oc
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