Russia - threadbanned users in OP

There's only three end game scenarios at this point:

1. Putin takes a bullet from his own people
2. Putin ends war and whines about western interference (we woulda won in a fair fight)
3. Putin uses nukes, uses the US WW2 justification. Still might not actually end war

Maybe a fourth.

To quote Martin Luther King: "I have a dream"...

Any reason to think that all this illness is a ploy to have the west think it could have a crazy man on their hands who wants to take the world down with him?

The thought had crossed my mind. But if the "crazy" bit were true then I would have thought he'd have been taken out by his own, or a coup, by now.

The illness bit is more baffling. There's nothing concrete to base any assumptions on. I think only time will tell on that one.

Irrespective of crazy or health, the great problem here is that Putin has such an iron grip on all aspects of control in Russia. He's carefully nurtured a power structure over 20 years that sees him as being absolute in everything. There are no doubt plenty of his cronies and inner circle who disagree with what he's doing, and moreso how he's going about doing it, but it's more than their life (and that of their families) is worth to challenge him or cross him in any way whatsoever. We've seen what happens to them when they do.

Any man who can assassinate and poison his enemies, muzzle the free press, imprison his political opposition, authorise the invasion of another country where children and women are raped and butchered, and threaten a nuclear response should anyone interfere is not a man that can be negotiated with in any sensible way.

Whichever way everything pans out Putin is going to come out the loser, both in the short and long term. He must be in a state of mental turmoil at that thought alone at present.

The problem with the kind of iron-fisted rule which Putin appears to have cultivated is that it breeds a deep-seated well of resentment in the people. In a more open society, this can be voiced and therefore vented. In an authoritarian state, it has nowhere to go except the minds of the people under the regime. This is the fallacy of authoritarianism. It looks solid, but it's mightily brittle, and when it cracks, it cracks violently. This is what Putin is heading up, and I think the silent resentment against him will only worsen as time goes on and Russia becomes ever more of a pariah state and its young people have suddenly gone from being able to participate in a global world to living under paranoid oppression. Putin can only hope he pops his clogs before the breaking point comes.

Well it might have been a blanket or it might have been a protective gear.

I know, conspiracy forum is there >>>

If you were hiking in, say, the Canadian Rockies and were confronted by a mountain lion or a bear and you wounded them with your hunting knife, it would be then that the animal would be much more dangerous to you, than when you first saw them on the trail. Much more dangerous when they are in pain, in shock, angry, thinking of their nearby young and the protection they won't have. When they are dying.

There has been a fair bit of glee going around since the Moscow parade on Monday, about Putin. I'm wondering why.

The Ukrainians have him deposed and imprisoned already. The talking heads on our Western news programmes have him diagnosed with everything from Parkinsons to Leukaemia.

Yeah, thank God. Heave a sigh of relief everyone, this Russian bear is seeing all his plans turn to shyt and his own once model body consumed by disease and decrepitude and humiliation.

This guy with nothing left to lose. This guy with 6,000 nuclear warheads.

..

Crackers!

Not even that far back.

Free French government or Vichy.

I'm thinking Vichy.

The American's big nuclear firework in the Cold War was called the "Peacekeeper".

NATO names the Soviet-Russian equivalent(s) "Satan".

The most blatant and disgraceful display of Russophobia imo.

The 80yr old beside him wasn't wearing a blanket so Putin must be in a jocker to blemish his hard man rep like that.

Would you kill the bear for fear it might strike again? Maybe not now but in the future?

What are the options here? It wasn't western intervention that destroyed Russian elite units to hamper their ability to wage war, it was Ukrainian resistance that pushed the bear in a corner. How can anybody in the west look at Ukraine and just say, you did well but you need to give ground just because Putin tried. The very minute the US and NATO gave weapons, there was simply no turning back. We all know the ramifications for not doing anything, looking at China and maybe North Korea in a few years.

And on top of all that Russia's ability to wage war is barbaric and frightening, a stones throw from Berlin. It drains the blood to think of what Putin and the FSB wanted to do should they have taken Kiev. Millions deported, imprisoned or forced conscription.

So as long as that bear is in the corner and confined to the Donbas, atrocities is not happening in Moldova, Georgia and Lithuania.