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I hope this doesn't end with Russia turning into another North Korea, yet 100x more dangerous. Sanctions didn't solve anything in NK and isolation only strengthened the government's hold on the country. Russia can support itself, yet the common people will suffer. Right now Russians need to fight for their country as well, Putin needs to step down, but how. I feel like all the progress that has been made since the iron curtain fell is now gone and then some.
The biggest difference between Putin’s Russia and that of Yeltsin, his patron and predecessor, is that Putin fears and rejects the West. Yeltsin saw the end of the Soviet Union as liberation and the West as a partner. But Putin seeks a reincarnation of the union, not so much in economic or political terms as in geopolitical ones — with Russia representing the polar opposite of the West.
In another respect, Putin’s regime is a continuation of Yeltsin’s. Neither had a strong fixed ideology on the left-right spectrum. Both were driven by the same political motivation: to stay in power and to manipulate elections to keep the opposition out. Yeltsin did it with the support of Russian oligarchs to protect newborn Russian capitalism, private property, and the market economy, but Putin aimed to defend the country’s partly restored international might against the West.
Reads to me like Putin wouldn't mind the isolation, this is from last year btw
Putin essentially faces two choices in 2024: to hand over power to a successor who is fully under his control or to be his own successor and stay in power. His forebodings about history are an important reason why he has, perhaps fatefully, chosen the second option.
No one but Putin himself will confirm that this is actually his intention until the next election is much closer. There is already plenty of talk in Moscow about bringing the date of the 2024 election forward — perhaps to early 2021. Either way, Putin’s bet is based on a strong conviction that his personal power makes Russia stronger and lowers the risk of a perestroika 2.0. And yet, the paradox is that by choosing what he regards as the safest option both domestically and geopolitically, Putin may condemn Russia to a new period of stagnation — and thereby become the unwitting godfather of the very perestroika he seeks to avoid.
Not stagnation, regression is what he ends up with. It seems unlikely he's going to back down willingly.
Putin knows full well that over the past century, almost every Russian leader — from former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to Brezhnev to Gorbachev to Yeltsin — has built up his legitimacy by emphasizing how he is embarking on something new and telling the public that he is erasing the defects of his predecessor. Without mentioning him by name, Putin now attributes catastrophic errors to the man who picked him as his heir. Putin evidently wants to avoid this fate and will not accept ending up as the unfortunate predecessor who suffers by comparison with Russia’s next leader.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/07/31/the-perils-of-perestroika-why-putin-chose-to-prolong-his-rule-a71027
It seems the only way out is China managing to talk some sense into the guy. Otherwise it's going to be a long war :(
