Coming hammer blow. The Russian elites position and Russia equivocates as to extreme measures (nuclear strike) and an informal ranking of successors

A coming race to the bottom. If Putin drops an A bomb on Snake Island, he will be overthrown in 72 hours

Here is whom I suspect may be alive to contend for a post Putin crown

A. Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin

B. Whomever heads the FSB right after Putin nukes Snake Island

C. Andrei Kartapolov, a former army general and head of the State Duma’s defence committee,

In other words a world class **** show, with the vast patronage system of corruption unraveling if and when Putin goes. Keep this in mind

quote

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, recently saying the US had set a "precedent" by dropping atomic bombs in World War II. While their use is still deemed exceedingly unlikely by analysts, Western officials are taking the threats seriously and?monitoring Russia?for any signs it may be preparing to use a smaller, tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield

end of quote

This is why I believe, A bombing Snake Island would be "ideal" from Putin's stand point, only that the USA would likely wind up sinking the Russian Navy in the Black sea. I.e. a one two punch no one would ever forget

While that is going on

quote

But none of us have ever known the Russia that a now desperate, back-against-the-wall Putin seems hellbent on delivering — a pariah Russia; a big, humiliated Russia; a Russia that has sent many of its most talented engineers, programmers and scientists fleeing through any exit they can find. This would be a Russia that has already lost so many trading partners that it can survive only as an oil and natural gas colony of China, a Russia that is a failed state, spewing out instability from every pore.

end of quote

Being a natural gas colony to China would be the least destructive outcome for the Russian Federation. Meanwhile keep this in mind

quote

Science is considered a global endeavour with researchers partnering up with colleagues all over the world. Now many in Russia feel their work, shut off from international collaborations, will wither.

Dr Alexander Nozik, a physicist at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, told the Guardian: “I believe and most of my colleagues believe that it just isn’t possible to do isolated science. In physics the science journal system in Russia is mostly dead.”

Nozik says “most younger academics, including me” are talking to contacts in?Europe?and formulating a “backup plan”. He adds: “A lot of world-class scientists I know here can’t work on their research because they are so depressed. They can’t understand how we can live with all this.”

end of quote

I as a Physics PhD can attest to this. The genius of Russia, its scientists, are being massacred by this war of the damned. I have met these scientists, and they, are the cream of cream of Russian civilization. They are the one of the many tragic victims of this abomination

quote

?This article is more than?6 months old

‘No hope for science in Russia’: the academics trying to flee to the west

This article is more than 6 months old

Russian scientists are turning to partners abroad to help them escape, but face an uncertain future even if successful

• Russia-Ukraine war: live updates

Anna Fazackerley

Sat 2 Apr 2022 03.30 EDT

Prof John Duggan*, a climate scientist at a Russell Group university, had a Zoom call a few weeks ago with two Russian research partners shortly after their country invaded?Ukraine. Duggan, who has worked with the academics for a while, suddenly found them “unusually quiet and hesitant”. He sensed that “they were worried someone was looking over their shoulder”.

In?Russia, expressing opposition to the invasion is risky. But in subsequent calls Duggan says his friends have become bolder. Now they have given up hope for their work at home. They feel there is “no future for science in Russia” and are seeking positions abroad so they can flee.

Given that?criticising the war?can now lead to 15 years in prison in Russia, Duggan describes all communications with the scientists he is trying to help as deliberately “ambiguous”. But he says: “They feel shame at what is being done in their name in Ukraine.”

UK academics say this is becoming a familiar story. Russian scientists are turning to partners abroad to help them escape, but academics in the UK say even the most talented may struggle to find positions at short notice in British universities.

Our president who … made the most difficult … but necessary decision in his life.

Russian university chiefs’ statement echoing Putin’s propaganda on the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine

Last Sunday, the science minister, George Freeman, announced that the UK would follow other European countries in?cutting the bulk of its research ties?with Russia and switching off funding for any research with links to the state and its “institutional collaborators”.

The Russian government said last week that it was prohibiting its scientists from taking part in international conferences and that universities should no longer rely on Russian scientists’ publications being listed on international databases as a form of evaluation. Russian scientists say there is some appetite to ignore this, but there are reports that they are being blocked from publishing abroad anyway because some western academics are refusing to review research papers with Russian names on.

Duggan’s university, which the Guardian is not naming in order to avoid risk to the Russian academics, is making sanctuary for Ukrainian scholars and students its top priority, along with supporting staff and students already affected by the war. The university is also exploring whether it could offer positions to any Russians. Duggan says: “The university is keen to be as supportive as possible. It will work within government guidelines, but recognises that many individual Russian academics and researchers have publicly criticised this invasion, often at great personal risk.”

Science is considered a global endeavour with researchers partnering up with colleagues all over the world. Now many in Russia feel their work, shut off from international collaborations, will wither.

Dr Alexander Nozik, a physicist at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, told the Guardian: “I believe and most of my colleagues believe that it just isn’t possible to do isolated science. In physics the science journal system in Russia is mostly dead.”

Nozik says “most younger academics, including me” are talking to contacts in?Europe?and formulating a “backup plan”. He adds: “A lot of world-class scientists I know here can’t work on their research because they are so depressed. They can’t understand how we can live with all this.”

Nozik says he intends to ignore the government statement banning publishing in international journals and many colleagues will follow suit. But he adds that researchers there are “complaining a lot that academics [in the west] are blocking [journal] papers by refusing to review them if they have a Russian collaborator”.

Prof Erica Brewer*, an environmental scientist at a northern research university in the UK, fears for the safety of research partners in Russia who are speaking out against the war. “I have received requests from two very talented Russian colleagues asking if I know of opportunities to work abroad,” she says. “A colleague and I have put out feelers for them but it is currently not possible to find a place for them in the UK or Europe.”

Dr James Ryan, a senior lecturer in modern Russian history at?Cardiff University, says: “I’ve been in contact with academic friends in Russia. Some of them have already fled, and have no intention of returning any time soon. That’s the situation with many more.”

However, he says, while some Russian academics may be able to use their reputations and academic contacts to secure short term research funding at European universities, finding longer-term jobs in the fiercely competitive academic job market will be much harder.

His own work is affected. Before the invasion Ryan relied on using libraries and archives in Russia for his research, but now he has no idea when he will be able to go back there.

Thousands of academics in Russia have signed?open letters?condemning the war. Last Friday, Russia’s ministry of justice declared the popular Russian science newspaper?Troitsky Variant?“a foreign agent” following its publication of a letter by scientists and science journalists opposing the invasion that was signed by about 8,000 people. The paper’s website is now blocked in Russia.

The majority of Russian universities are run by the state and last month the Russian rectors’ union, representing nearly 700 university chancellors and presidents, horrified British universities by issuing a?statement?echoing Vladimir Putin’s propaganda on the “denazification” of Ukraine and supporting “our president who … made the most difficult, hard-won but necessary decision in his life”.

Ryan says that after this, “it would be ethically problematic to seek a formal invitation from a Russian institution [to do research there]”.

He firmly supports the British government’s decision to cut formal ties with Russian higher education institutions, but intends to maintain informal personal connections with colleagues in Russia. Last week, as an “act of solidarity”, he attended an online conference with mostly Russian historians who he says “were certainly not supportive of the Russian war”.

He adds: “I would be horrified if academics are refusing to review papers written or co-written by Russians. This is racism.”

Terry Callaghan, a professor of Arctic ecology at Sheffield University, says: “We have very strong collaborations with Russian scientists and the invasion is a huge blow to our work.”

Callaghan has helped establish 89?environmental research stations?in the Arctic, 21 of which are in Russia, but says “lots of our research is now frozen because of the invasion”. “I’m absolutely sure many scientists will leave Russia. Putin has divided the nation, but scientists tend to speak English and they also read the internet so they understand what is really happening in Ukraine.”

Callaghan paused his professorship at the National Research Tomsk State University in Siberia after the Russian rectors’ statement. He says he has halted all formal commitments with Russia but will not abandon personal connections with scientists that he has been fostering for 30 years.

However, he says this is more difficult to do in other places where he conducts research. “In Finland we are not allowed even to email a Russian, and where I am now [in Arctic Norway] we can’t have a Russian on a Zoom call.”

Individual academics in Russia are still welcome to attend the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies’ annual conference in Cambridge next weekend, albeit not representing their institutions.

Dr Ben Phillips, a historian of modern Russian at Exeter University and a member of the society’s executive committee, says: “We discussed whether we should exclude Russian participants but decided against it.”

He says that instead the conference, which will feature a keynote address from a Ukrainian academic, will have a “strict code of conduct” and panel chairs will ask anyone who expresses support for the invasion of Ukraine to leave. But he adds: “Anyone harassing Russian academics on account of their nationality will be treated the same way.”

*?Some names have been changed to avoid identifying academics who are trying to leave Russia.

https://www.businessinsider.com/zelenskyy-russia-beginning-to-prepare-their-society-for-nuclear-war-2022-10

quote

Russia is beginning to 'prepare their society' to launch a nuclear attack, Zelenskyy says, but adds Putin is 'not ready to do it'

Charles R. Davis?6 hours ago

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was preparing its people for nuclear war.

• Speaking with the BBC, Zelenskyy said such preparations were "very dangerous."
• But he added that he did not think Russia had made a decision on whether to use nuclear weapons.

The Russian government is laying the groundwork to use nuclear arms, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday, adding that he did not think a decision on whether to use such weapons had been made but that even talking about it was "dangerous."

Speaking?with the BBC, Zelenskyy said Russia had begun "to prepare their society" for a nuclear strike in Ukraine, where Russian forces have been retreating in the wake of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in which the country recaptured territory that was annexed by Moscow a week ago. Zelenskyy added of the prospect of nuclear warfare: "That's very dangerous."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, recently saying the US had set a "precedent" by dropping atomic bombs in World War II. While their use is still deemed exceedingly unlikely by analysts, Western officials are taking the threats seriously and?monitoring Russia?for any signs it may be preparing to use a smaller, tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield — a possibility that one expert told Insider was "extraordinarily" concerning.

US President Joe Biden has likewise said he believes Putin is "not joking" about such threats.

While noting he shared such concerns, Zelenskyy said there was no reason to be fatalistic about a Russian threat designed to make Western nations think twice about supporting Ukraine.

"They are not ready to do it, to use it. But they begin to communicate. They don't know whether they'll use or not use it," he said, adding: "I think it's dangerous to even speak about it."

Zelenskyy said Russia was already threatening the world with its actions at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which it occupied in early March. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency last month said the situation at the plant was "untenable," adding: "We are one step away from a nuclear accident." The standoff has raised fears of another Chernobyl disaster, the 1986 nuclear-reactor meltdown that spread dangerous radiation across Europe.

The Ukrainian president urged his allies to impose additional sanctions on Russia to discourage any sort of nuclear duress.

"The world can stop urgently the actions of Russian occupiers," he said. "The world can implement the sanction package in such cases and do everything to make them leave the nuclear power plant."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/07/intense-dread-and-infighting-among-russian-elites-as-putins-war-falters?

quote

Someone will fall victim’: insiders reveal elite anguish as Russia’s war falters

Key figures including Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin are using military defeats to undermine defence chief Sergei Shoigu

by?Pjotr Sauer?and?Andrew Roth?in Moscow

Fri 7 Oct 2022 05.20 EDT

Friends, rivals and enemies took their seats in the Grand Kremlin Palace as?Vladimir Putin?gathered the country’s elite to formalise Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine.

The ceremony was meant to portray strength and unity, but within 24 hours had been overshadowed by Russia’s failures on the battlefield. These losses, which continued into this week on the southern and eastern fronts in?Ukraine, have led to a major, unprecedented rupture within the ruling class as the Kremlin seeks scapegoats for a series of military embarrassments.

The following account is based on 15 interviews with former government and defence officials, members of the military, political observers, journalists, opposition members, and an inmate at a prison where?Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin recruited soldiers to join his mercenary group in Ukraine.

The seven-month-long Russian invasion of its neighbour has plunged the Russian ruling elite into uncertainty, the sources say, and within it a growing understanding the war cannot be won.

Some ambitious officials have seen opportunity in the chaos, pitching to the Kremlin on ways to turn around a failing war and a botched mobilisation. Others are lying low, seeking to hold on to power or avoid punishment. Western intelligence agencies have reported high levels of dissatisfaction among the Russian army and in the country’s elite. Some have even suggested a coup could take place.

Two of Vladimir Putin’s most notorious lieutenants, Prigozhin and the Chechen leader?Ramzan Kadyrov, have openly declared war against the defence minister, Putin loyalist Sergei Shoigu, and his top generals following a series of disastrous defeats that have left Russia’s army in retreat.

“Putin is a very destructive personality, he will play the different factions off each other and see what the best outcome will be,” a former defence ministry official told the Guardian. “He doesn’t know how to fix relationships, so in the end, someone will fall victim. Putin just wants to see what is best for him and the war in Ukraine.”

Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander who knows Prigozhin from his time at the paramilitary group, said he wasn’t “surprised to see Prigozhin stepping into the spotlight” at this moment.

“On the current wave of patriotism, he wants to position himself as a fierce defender of the motherland who created a professional military organisation. He wants to show that he can fight better than the regular army. We always had tensions with the ministry of defence, we really didn’t like each other.”

According to a former senior defence official who worked with Shoigu and Prigozhin, the rivalry between the two men is a longstanding feud that goes back to the founding of Wagner in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea. It was exacerbated, the person said, when Shoigu recently fired deputy defence minister Dmitry Bulgakov, an official who had reportedly helped Prigozhin obtain lucrative contracts supplying the army.

“Prigozhin will now be out for revenge against Shoigu,” that person said. He described Prigozhin as a person with “no morals, no conscience, and no hobbies … He is a machine in the bad sense of the word.”

Prigozhin has found an unlikely ally in Kadyrov, the volatile leader of?Chechnya?who has established the North Caucasus republic as a personal fiefdom in exchange for securing its loyalty to Russia. Yet in the recent conflict, he has emerged as one of the harshest critics of the Russian defence ministry, claiming his own fighters could take Kyiv within days even after the Russian army had been repulsed.

Shortly after the Russian defeat last week at Lyman, a crucial railway hub in the Donetsk region, Kadyrov unleashed a withering attack on the Russian general staff and at the central military district commander Alexander Lapin responsible for the city’s defence.

“The shame isn’t that Lapin is incompetent,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram. “It’s that he’s being shielded from above by the leadership in the General Staff. If it was up to me, I would bust him down to a private, take away his medals and send him with a rifle to the front in order to cleanse his shame in blood.”

“Military nepotism will not lead anywhere good,” he added.

“Beautiful, Ramzan, keep it up,” Prigozhin chimed in. “These punks should be shipped to the front barefoot with machine guns.”

Putin for years has pitted his underlings against one another in order to prevent them from uniting against him. Since early in the war, rumours have circulated through Moscow about fistfights at the Kremlin involving Shoigu and other officials (none have been confirmed).

“This balancing game might work in peacetime, but right now it distracts from the war efforts,” said Marat Gelman, a former adviser to Vladimir Putin and now a critic of the Kremlin leader.

These kinds of public spats are “new, important, and unprecedented too”, said Dmitry Oreshkin, a veteran Russian political scientist. “We haven’t seen such an open and public battle amongst the elites before for Putin’s attention.”

One Chechnya watcher said that Kadyrov’s criticism of the military reflected his ambitions to be “something more than just the head of a region”. The former defence official similarly said that Kadyrov was aiming for a senior role in the government.

“He knows that war is his time to shine, he has to strike now,” the former defence official said.

“Everyone is playing the blame game, and Kadyrov is at the forefront of it,” said Farida Rustamova, a Russian journalist who has written on divisions in the Russian elite. “He sees himself as one of the leaders of the war. Like the son Putin never had. It feels like a snowball that is getting bigger and bigger with every defeat.”

The two men are not the only ones leading a pile-on against the Russian military. TV propagandists such as Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Soloviev have openly criticised the execution of the draft, accusing the military of fomenting instability in the country by attempting to recruit Russians unfit for service.

“Our people are not stupid,” said Andrei Kartapolov, a former army general and head of the State Duma’s defence committee, while accusing the military of lying in its daily updates on the war. “They can see that they are not being told the truth.”

A Russian-installed official in Ukraine even suggested Shoigu should shoot himself because of failures in the Ukraine conflict.

The attacks on the defence ministry come at one of the most dangerous moments in the war, after Russia’s army has lost thousands of square miles of territory and has been unable to stabilise its lines in Kharkiv, Donetsk or now in the Kherson region.

“The Kremlin is looking for scapegoats. There have been three obvious failures: the start of the war, the latest military failures, and the botched mobilisation,” said Gelman, the former Putin adviser.

Shoigu and other top military officials are the obvious target. Once seen by Russia’s public as the man who modernised Russia’s army and oversaw the successful 2014 Crimea operation, Shoigu is now facing a backlash for the military’s failures. And there are clear temptations to sack him.

“There are always ways to let off pressure,” said a well-connected Moscow political observer, who asked not to be named when discussing the military. “We have a wonderful minister of defence. A fantastic chief of the general army staff. If the defeats continue … there are always possibilities [to sack them]. And everyone will support it. They’ll say [Putin’s] finally acting tough, punishing the guilty.”

The feeling may be mutual. According to the former defence official, “knowing Shoigu, I truly believe he would be happy to get sacked right now. He wants out of this mess.”

The native of Tuva had always been an unenthusiastic supporter of the 2014 war in the Donbas but was overruled by a cadre of hawkish Kremlin advisers including Nikolai Patrushev, the person said. He also was not in favour of the more recent “annexations” of occupied Ukrainian territory, he added.

But Putin knows he can trust Shoigu and sacking him would be deeply embarrassing, said that official.

“Even if Shiogu isn’t happy with what is happening, he’ll always be loyal to Putin and do his job,” the person said. “Putin knows he can fully trust him.”

That reflected a sense among a number of Russian elites that despite the challenges posed by the upstarts that the weight of Russia’s main ministries: the army, FSB, police and others would far exceed the threat posed by them.

Kadyrov didn’t have the authority to tell Putin to replace his defence minister, said a former top official. And Kadyrov was considerably more measured in his private interactions with Putin than in his public statements, the person said. Prigozhin, meanwhile, was just an “operator”.

“I cannot imagine that the FSB would allow either Prigozhin or Kadyrov to acquire any political power,” said Yevgenia Albats, a Russian investigative journalist and editor of the New Times. “It’s impossible.”

Albats, who recently left Russia after being targeted repeatedly for her reporting, said that her contacts among Russian officials estimated that at least 70% of top officials – people she referred to as the?nomenklatura?– were opposed to the war.

Another well-connected journalist who works on state television said that “intense dread” has taken hold of much of the political elite.

“The higher you go, the more desperation you feel. There is general understanding now that the war can’t be won.”

Albats said that for now, the opposition to the war that has taken hold among senior officials was unlikely to threaten Putin himself.

“They’re very afraid. Even people I have known for my life, known for several decades, my friends. We no longer can meet because I became so toxic.”

“For there to be a schism people need to stop being afraid,” Albats said. “Where should these guys even meet? The phones are tapped, the flats are tapped.”

Oreshkin, the political scientist, said the risks for any party to move against Putin was simply too high.

“This whole system is built around a?vozdh, a leader. If you get rid of Putin you have to be able to deliver quick results, but everyone knows that is not possible right now.”

On the other extreme, Kadyrov and Prigozhin’s macho personas appear to have filtered into the Kremlin. One person who knows Sergei Kiriyenko, a presidential administration figure who had been tasked with managing politics in the occupied territories, said his decision to dress in fatigues and visit the region was probably inspired by them: “In the time of the freaks, you have to dress up as one too,” he said.

Valery Fyodorov, head of the state-run WCIOM polling centre, said that Prigozhin is still largely unknown, and until a video of him at a prison surfaced last month, he was a “man without a face”.

But Kadyrov polls well even among Russians, he said. “He says the right things … He presents himself as a foot-soldier soldier of Putin. And that’s how people view him … he doesn’t position himself like a Chechen fighter, but like a Russian one.”

And in a time when Russian military officials are seen as dithering and duplicitous, a swaggering ex-con with his own private army may be dangerous.

“Prigozhin spoke with a lot of confidence,” said Ivan, an inmate at the penal colony No 8 in the Tambov region. “We all listened when he spoke, and trust me that is not easy to shut up a good [number] of prisoners. He is one of us in the end, a former inmate. I think many who signed up did so because they trust Progzhin. They don’t trust the authorities, but they believe Prigozhin when he tells them that they will be let free.”

end of quote

quote

Putin Is Trying to Outcrazy the West

Sept. 30, 2022

By?Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

With his annexation of parts of Ukraine on Friday, Vladimir Putin has set in motion forces that are turning Russia into a giant North Korea. It will be a paranoid, angry, isolated state, but unlike North Korea, the Russian version will be spread over 11 time zones — from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea and from the edge of free Europe to the edge of Alaska — with thousands of nuclear warheads.

I have known a Russia that was strong, menacing, but stable — called the Soviet Union. I have known a Russia that was hopeful, potentially transitioning to democracy under Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and even the younger Putin. I have known a Russia that was a “bad boy” under an older Putin, hacking America, poisoning opposition figures, but still a stable, reliable oil exporter and occasional security partner with the U.S. when we needed Moscow’s help in a pinch.

But none of us have ever known the Russia that a now desperate, back-against-the-wall Putin seems hellbent on delivering — a pariah Russia; a big, humiliated Russia; a Russia that has sent many of its most talented engineers, programmers and scientists fleeing through any exit they can find. This would be a Russia that has already lost so many trading partners that it can survive only as an oil and natural gas colony of China, a Russia that is a failed state, spewing out instability from every pore.

Such a Russia would not be just a geopolitical threat. It would be a human tragedy of mammoth proportions. Putin’s North Koreanization of Russia is turning a country that once gave the world some of its most renowned authors, composers, musicians and scientists into a nation more adept at making potato chips than microchips, more famous for its?poisoned underwear?than its haute couture and more focused on unlocking its underground reservoirs of gas and oil than on its aboveground reservoirs of human genius and creativity. The whole world is diminished by Putin’s diminishing of Russia.

But with Friday’s annexation, it’s hard to see any other outcome as long as Putin is in power. Why? Game theorist Thomas Schelling famously suggested that if you are playing chicken with another driver, the best way to win — the best way to get the other driver to swerve out of the way first — is if before the game starts you very conspicuously unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window. Message to the other driver: I’d love to get out of the way, but I can’t control my car anymore. You better swerve!

Trying to always?outcrazy?your opponent is a North Korean specialty. Now, Putin has adopted it,?announcing?with great fanfare that Russia is annexing four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk and Donetsk, the two Russian-backed regions where pro-Putin forces have been fighting Kyiv since 2014, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which have been occupied since shortly after Putin’s invasion in February. In a grand hall of the Kremlin, Putin declared Friday that the residents of these four regions would become Russia’s citizens forever.

What is Putin up to? One can only speculate. Start with his domestic politics. Putin’s base is not the students at Moscow State University. His base is the right-wing nationalists, who have grown increasingly angry at Russia’s military humiliation in Ukraine. To hold their support, Putin may have felt the need to show that, with his reserve call-up and annexation, he is fighting a real war for Mother Russia, not just a vague special military operation.

However, this could also be Putin trying to maneuver a favorable negotiated settlement. I would not be surprised if he soon announces his willingness for a cease-fire — and a willingness to repair pipelines and resume gas shipments to any country ready to recognize Russia’s annexation.

Putin could then claim to his nationalist base that he got something for his war, even if it was hugely expensive, and now he’s content to stop. There is just one problem: Putin does not actually control all the territory he is annexing.

That means he can’t settle for any deal unless and until he’s driven the Ukrainians out of all the territory he now claims; otherwise he would be surrendering what he just made into sovereign Russian territory. This could be a very ominous development. Putin’s battered army does not seem capable of seizing more territory and, in fact, seems to be losing more by the day.

By claiming territory that he doesn’t fully control, I fear Putin is painting himself into a corner that he might one day feel he can escape only with a nuclear weapon.

In any event, Putin seems to be daring Kyiv and its Western allies to keep the war going into winter — when natural gas supplies in Europe will be constrained and prices could be astronomical — to recover territories, some of which his Ukrainian proxies have had under Russia’s influence since 2014.

Will Ukraine and the West swerve? Will they plug their noses and do a dirty deal with Putin to stop his filthy war? Or will Ukraine and the West take him on, head-on, by insisting that Putin get no territorial achievement out of this war, so we uphold the principle of the inadmissibility of seizing territory by force?

Do not be fooled: There will be pressure within Europe to swerve and accept such a Putin offer. That is surely Putin’s aim — to divide the Western alliance and walk away with a face-saving “victory.”

But there is another short-term risk for Putin. If the West doesn’t swerve, doesn’t opt for a deal with him, but instead doubles down with more arms and financial aid for Ukraine, there is a chance that Putin’s army will collapse.

That is unpredictable. But here is what is totally predictable: A dynamic is now in place that will push Putin’s Russia even more toward the North Korea model. It starts with Putin’s decision to cut off most natural gas supplies to Western Europe.

There is only one cardinal sin in the energy business: Never, ever, ever make yourself an unreliable supplier. No one will ever trust you again. Putin has made himself an unreliable supplier to some of his oldest and best customers, starting with Germany and much of the European Union. They are all now looking for alternative, long-term supplies of natural gas and building more renewable power.

It will take two to three years for the new pipeline networks coming from the Eastern Mediterranean and liquefied natural gas coming from the United States and North Africa to begin to sustainably replace Russian gas at scale. But when that happens, and when world natural gas supplies increase generally to compensate for the loss of Russia’s gas — and as more renewables come online — Putin could face a real economic challenge. His old customers may still buy some energy from Russia, but they will never rely so totally on Russia again. And China will squeeze him for deep discounts.

In short, Putin is eroding the biggest source — maybe his only source — of sustainable long-term income. At the same time, his illegal annexation of regions of Ukraine guarantees that the Western sanctions on Russia will stay in place, or even accelerate, which will only accelerate Russia’s migration to failed-state status, as more and more Russians with globally marketable skills surely leave.

I celebrate none of this. This is a time for Western leaders to be both tough and smart. They need to know when to swerve and when to make the other guy swerve, and when to leave some dignity out there for the other driver, even if he is behaving with utter disregard for anyone else. It may be that Putin has left us no choice but to learn to live with a Russian North Korea — at least as long as he is in charge. If that is the case, we’ll just have to make the best of it, but the best of it will be a much more unstable world.

end of quote

And Russian scientists , some whom I have met in person are one of the most tragic victims of Putin idiotsy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/02/no-hope-science-russia-academics-trying-flee-to-west

quote

Andrew Beckwith, PhD