Vladimir Putin is losing his grip on Russia(economist.com) |
Vladimir Putin is losing his grip on Russia(economist.com) |
Nothing is going well and economically the population is feeling it. I imagine this can’t go on much longer.
If you repeat this same news every time, then you'll eventually be right, yes.
It's not so much when the population feels it, rather the elites who prop Putin up.
They lost the plot, it's a little too late, but it's new.
At some point those changes might include stopping the war and getting rid of Putin.
I don't think all commentators fall into this trap, but more thoughtful predictions get overwhelmed by those expousing more impactful ideas.
It does seem that Putin has lost something recently, a grip on the hearts and minds of a subset of Russians that previously backed him come what may. The war has been quite static this year, Russia still losing a lot of men, and hardening domestic policy on Internet use. I doubt it's enough for violent protests.
While I understand that the true purpose of sanctions is to weaken a country's military, sometimes I do wonder if it is a war crime as it also ends up effectively "punishing the people".
But there have been some clear cases of Putin's omniscience leaking - the "3-day war" failure, the milbloggers he's has to imprison, the rebellion and loss of Wagner, the inability to protect Syria and Iran, every oligarch he has to execute, 20% interest rates. These aren't the indicators of a firm grasp of power.
>I have the impression that part of the system is already starting to work against Putin … It’s essentially … similar to what happened at the end of the Soviet Union, when people hated the [Communist] Party and did everything for it to end. Putin’s Russia will follow the same path as the Soviet Union. Everything is being repeated.
The only other way I know to weaken Russia, if only temporarily, is by funding Ukrainian drones targeting its fuel infra.
> China is failing
> Russia is done for
> X is over
There are entire youtube channels dedicated to these circlejerks and they are forced into my recommendations all while we loose freedoms to 'fight foreign propoganda'.
And the competing narratives that Russia is going to invade us all, but at the same time, is being defeated.
There are many, many articles on the front page of this publication that are not about Russia, so clearly "every single one of them" isn't even hyperbolically true.
Writing an article about the problems of a foreign nation when your own nation has problems isn't - and has never been - ironic.
Every once in a while they get to throw one about the enemy or any world leader out into the world and see if it sticks. Here's the Economist being super worried about Xi's grip on power [1].
[1] https://www.economist.com/china/2025/07/20/xi-jinping-is-gro...
I don't see the people in Russia overthrowing their government either. It seems more likely that internal public pressure would embolden a political change. It only takes the second layer collectively deciding it's politically expedient.
That doesn't necessarily mean the war stops though. Russia has been reshaping itself into a war economy to keep going, that might be hard to unwind.
The reason it succeeded in Ukraine and Bangladesh was because of a clear polity divide amongst the population, and huge local support from one of the political sides (including, very importantly, the army), which meant the double goal of (1) getting rid of an "unfriendly" government and (2) installing a "friendly" government could easily succeed. In Sri Lanka and Nepal, it has meant a regime change, but it isn't clear if whoever fomented the "revolution" - the west or the Chinese - have managed to get the desired "friendly" government. However, in all 4 cases, the so-called "revolution" has replaced experienced democratically elected leaders with inexperienced politicians at the helm (which is the second-best option you could hope for, if you can't install a puppet, as inexperienced leaders are more susceptible to political manipulations).
In Iran, what went wrong with this "revolution" is that, first, there is no real local support for pro-west or pro-Israel polity. All those who remember the Shah's regime (when Iran was an ally of the west) and had fond perceptions of the west are now either old or dead. Most of Shah's political supporters were either purged or left with the Shah to the US (or elsewhere). The later, and current, generation has only grown up experiencing American and Israeli hostilities. Irrational western Islamophobia and Israeli-right's hostility to Islam also doesn't help. Along with an understanding of imperialistic history, they despise repeated western attempts of interference in their politics and thus, overall, have have no goodwill to either regimes. Thus, those hoping for a regime change and the installation of the Shah were always delusional that any hostility for the Ayatollah could be translated to support for the west and the Shah. (Moreover, the current "Shah" - the son of deposed Shah - who the west hope to install in power, chooses to stay in US or Europe and thus has no support or understanding of the domestic politics of Iran, and he largely perceived as a puppet of America and Israel amongst the local Iranians).
Second, Trump and Netanyahu's regime underestimated the Ayatollah regime. They figured that just as in Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the government would somehow cave-in under the violent protests rather than opt to suppress the political violence because of the high death toll. Perhaps they might have partially caved-in, if not, for Trump's and Netanyahu's very public "appeal" to the Iranians to "seize the moment" and overthrow the government. This immediately made the Ayatollah regime resolute that the revolution was foreign-instigated, and gave it a public excuse to unleash State violence as an emergency measure (that any State would normally do when faced with a foreign backed insurgency) against protestors. And as Trump's regime claims, the "revolution really failed because the guns that were supposed to be distributed amongst disgruntled Iranians never reached them. Moreover, Iran, that has been surrounded by west and western allies, that has repeatedly sought to undermine it, has been studying western imperialism and destabilisation strategies for decades now. After seeing what happened in Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka (who were genuinely unprepared for an unexpected violent political protests, in their political planning), it probably already had a contingency in place for a similar situation that the west never anticipated.
Also, if the Americans and Israelis had been more patient, and not immediately attacked Iran, the high death toll (around 3000 or so) of the Iranian protestors could have been used against the Ayotallah regime. The deaths (and arrests) had resulted in a rise of anger and hostility against the regime, which could have been tapped in by the local opposition (who have been demanding further reforms in Iran's pseudo-democracy). All that political potential has been forever lost now because of the rash decision to kill the Ayatollah (who is now considered a martyr, and even more revered) and invade Iran.
Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong, with the current political strategy against Iran ...
Arguably the Soviet Union. There's also a fairly strong argument, I think, that apartheid South Africa jumped before it was pushed, here.
There was also an attempt in Belarus, but Belarus is imperfectly sanctioned; it has Russia propping it up. There is no super-Russia propping Russia up, however (China's support is fairly conditional and Putin would be foolish to depend on it.)