Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It’s getting hard to know what public opinion in Russia is because there’ll be nobody with access to it in a few days by the looks of things and all we’ll be hearing is quotes from a modern version of Pravda.

Russia isn’t all that wealthy. The average income is only about €450 a month, and there’s a bubble of wealth in the cities people visit most - Moscow and St Petersburg. That’s giving a very false impression of the reality of life for most Russians, which is petty hard and basic and not about the latest Gucci handbag or iPhone.

Putin seems to have morphed into more than just a political figure. He’s been described as having become an institution in his own right. There’s a large part of the population that seems to like the strong leader / good king model. It’s not and never has been a developed democracy and doesn’t appear to have a democratic culture.

I’m not sure where this is going. Frankly I don’t think anyone is. Reading Putin isn’t easy. He appears to be a complete black box in that regard. There’s never been much evidence or emotion or attachment to anything - just this cold, strange character who never even cracks a smile. I mean look back at recent leaders like Yeltsin and Gorbachev even there really old soviets like Khrushchev and Chernenko were very, very different to this guy.

What rather than who is at the other side of the chess table. I don’t know what is is but when I see that guy I just see a void. He seems to make no eye contact. He looks at the floor a lot, he never shows any sort of emotion and now he has even gone as extreme as these huge long tables. There’s an air of mystery that I really find very concerning and it’s reminding me of Kim in some ways.

I thought there was something seriously up when Macron’s security wouldn’t allow him to be swabbed for COVID - it indicated that French intelligence must have had a credible concern for his safety. There’s been something ratcheting up for than just these last few days in Ukraine.

As for someone suggesting that they’ve a concern about nuclear war further up the thread. It’s hopefully unlikely, but I don’t really think anyone, probably even intelligence agencies, can get a good sense of how unlikely it is.

The Russians also don’t have much of a history of rebellion, at least not since the 1917-23 revolution. The Soviet Union was rebelled against mostly in Eastern Europe other than Russia. Russia itself sort of fizzled out of soviet mode and into a sort of tolerated oligarchy with many of the institutions just adapting to that and adopting capitalist approaches. They never really embraced any great swing to being a liberal democracy. That’s why I’m really not holding out much hope that some popular uprising against Putin will emerge. I think really our most likely sight of protest in Russia may come from the military deciding that enough is enough and just deposing Putin and delivering no radical change.

I’m sure the oligarchs will also play a role as they’re the ones feeling the pinch. You could also just find many of them will escape the pressure and exit, with assets - and you can see Putin moved to try to prevent that with capital controls. Assets in Roubles are probably worthless though until the currency eventually recovers, which could be a long way off, but I doubt many keep them in that.

Money will have flown out already - cryptocurrency, or in many cases the assets were already abroad anyway.

You got to the 4th line before mentioning America, that's better than most manage!

The yanks won't want this dragging on. The nonsense of "The Americans will fight til the last Ukrainian" is just what it is, sheer nonsense. The Ukrainians are the ones fighting and choosing to fight. Do you think if the Ukrainians had rolled over that big bad America would have done 10% of the sanctions that they have done?

See here's a thing that I wish we weren't in such a world that I have to admit; the Yanks were right. Europe has been fostering closer and closer economic integration with Russia, thinking it was the path to peace and prosperity. It has been shown it didn't work. Russia have felt nothing from the EU except kid gloves and look what they've gone and done.

As for peace, I'll believe it when I see it. It's hard to negotiate with someone who has demands and the upper hand. Why would Russia except anything less than all the territory they gain before fighting ends? And even accepting that, are we to suddenly accept Russia's word on anything? They're going to level the country, chase out masses of the population, kill a smaller mass of the population, take the heavy industries and (best case) strangle what's left of Ukraine.