Anne Applebaum and somebody called Noah Millman, quoted in The Atlantic, saying things that I, and maybe one or two others on here, were saying months ago. (Which just goes to show that we are fucking better than they are, but don't get paid for our efforts.)
Who Knows What Putin Will Do Next?
The possibility of a succession crisis in a nuclear power––and the added possibility that a figure more hawkish than Putin could prevail in such a crisis––is the stuff of nightmares. Now imagine instead that Ukraine wins the war, absent any significant escalation from Moscow. Even that will pose seemingly unsolvable challenges, Noah Millman
argues:
Having spent a lot of time there, and having known many Russians, almost exclusively of the 'liberal' variety (quotations because liberals in Russia-and Ukraine for that matter-bear only tenuous relation to liberals in the west), I am all but convinced that Russia cannot, and therefore will not, fundamentally change.