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I can not understand why you doubt it
Putin isn't dumb? He underestimated how Europe and Ukraine would handle his invasion, but domestically he's proven plenty adept at doing the job of kleptocrat.
Xi was also a nepobaby, for what it's worth. Putin's life trajectory involved more good luck at the very least, if not actual competence.
Did he? I'm not by any stretch a Putin supporter, yet I fail to see how he's not 1) strengthening his support at home, and 2) winning the war of attrition in Ukraine
He's pretty quickly running out of economy to fund the war. It's very very expensive to pay people who don't care about your war to die for it, and revenues have not gone up. Their industrial production is a joke and they've actually burned through the Soviet doomsday stockpiles. The original goal was to take Kiev immediately, watch as Europe does nothing a but write a strongly worded letter, and then move on to the Baltics. If there's no deal keep an eye on the value of the ruble.
Meanwhile, Ukraine still hasn't expanded conscription to under-25s, and still has access to bottomless Western supplies.
I'm also not sure how Putin's domestic support is stronger than before. Fighting Ukraine is seen domestically in Russia a lot like fighting Canada would be in the US - nobody really wants to do that. Increasing both handouts and enforcement against dissidents has been a real priority for him, as a result.
Is that true? Im not arguing that the Russian economy is booming, but diversifying to export crude to China India and Turkey is helping the wartime economy trundle along in the war of attrition.
The Muscovite elites probably don't care about the war as long as it's not impacting them too much, these are not the people sent to the front lines.
Idk, I've heard for 4 years now that the Russian economy is about to collapse any second now, and the opposite seems to have happened. I fear this is a miscalculation from the Western allies
Exactly, it's not booming, but it is kind of carrying on. Russia stopped reporting it's interest rate when it was around 20% and going up, IIRC. The post-covid US rate peaked at 6% or so. They've started figuratively burning the furniture - all maintenance and secondary industries get squeezed, the less-beloved oligarchs get squeezed, production (such as it is) moves to military stuff that's destined to be blown up anyway, as opposed to future sources of revenue.
Mainstream journalism isn't the best source about this kind of thing, not because they're dishonest or incompetent, but because they're allergic to statistics, and the tone can be anything. On the flipside, you'd think Ukraine is going to run out of territory any moment, going by the reporting, when in actuality the front lines have barely moved since the initial stages of the war. Adiivka and Pokrovsk are not major centers. Perun on YouTube is a military logistics person, and has some nice, really detailed videos.
The question is when he runs out, and that's harder to say. Yours truly guessed 15 months a few months back. One could also guess years, or weeks. Forever defies basic logic about how the supply chains work right now. There's also a question about what happens then - can they keep going and sending soldiers through an economic collapse?
Ukraine couldn't last years, but will last weeks.
My calculation is that China will step in to bail Russia out, as that would sediment Russia as a true vassal to China, and maybe even take some territories from Russia in the process.
I'd argue that having a desperate population is good for the war machine, as the military class are then the only subset of the population that enjoy some sort of comfort (this is analogous to how military families enjoyed certain privileges even as Japan was starving at the end of World War 2).
I really wish I'm wrong
Putin believes he can become immortal by replacing his organs
Yeah, that was a conversation with Xi.
China's a stronger country, no doubt. Mostly because of people who came before Xi.
In which he disappointedly replied max life expectancy is 150 years with current medical advancements
Nepobaby word really became popular recently, isnt it? Xi has better education, better in science, politics, shows better results economically ecologically. Better country in r and d. People in China live better than in Russia. Putin is just a thug who is lucky to be in right place right time.