Do we know that the next guy/guys on the chain of command are less crazy than Putin?
i didn’t get that from twitter. the ukranian analyst is Oleg Zhdanov, reservist colonel who served in ukr headquarters, who gives daily interviews all over the place. the western analyst is Sean Bell, former RAF vicemarshal, who does a weekly explanatory longform interview with a russian reporter in exile. neither tweets afaik
that’s the funny part. constitutionally, if putin died, power goes to the PM who is a virtual nobody. but it is expected for Security Committee to pick a new acting president and eventually have him win an election.
there is no next in the chain of command per se. putin isn’t going to trust anyone to consolidate that much behind the scenes power
I don’t think killing Putin is anywhere close to impossible if you don’t care about collateral damage.
one of the things putin is openly concerned with is the amount of time a missile reaches from a nato base to the kremlin (or his residence near moscow). from ukraine, it would be 10-15 minutes or something. if we explore why that might be important to him as opposed to 30-45 minutes from poland or germany, we could hypothesize that in case of a missile detection, putin has an escape plan which doesn’t fit into 15 minutes or less. this is a theory favored by some navalny compatriots.
assassinating the head of state is grounds for nuclear retaliation
but who is going to authorize it if putin’s dead? most will be packing gold bars and parachutes onto private jets
The next strongman who doesn’t want to look weak. Putin’s lack of obvious successor means he’s not going to be succeeded by some diplomat.
Jfc. Some Twitter replies are saying it was staged as propaganda to scare protestors, and I really hope thats true. Those screams are awful.
this is pointless without naming some names.
Putin was basically a nobody in early 1998. I’m not sure why it’s incumbent on me to put forth a particular strongman to fill a power vacuum when strongmen have been filling power vacuums for most of human history, and it’s not always clear who the next strongman will be.
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It’s classic NBZ mentally masturbating to the most deadly and chaotic scenarios imaginable.
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gorbachev didn’t get replaced but he wasn’t a strongmen either. when strongmen fall, it’s historically followed by a period of rooting out the old guard, so jailings, killings, public scapegoating. it’s a better lead to look at who can freeze the conflict and how, which is a really hard task.
putin inner circle aren’t real candidates, he was afraid of competition, he eliminated anyone who could gain loyalty for themselves. the oligarchs are afraid to speak up and stepping up is like betting their fortunes. if i were them, i’d try to buy a quiet retirement in the maldoves, not grab a nuclear hot potato.
strongmen like pushilin or kadyrov are nonstarters. very fringe and stupid to boot. there are maybe some governors who have not blown credibility yet, although the obvious guesses like beglov and sobyanin are hated.
qnyways the most credible candidates are jailed. letting them out might be a deal with the devil, some sort of safety guarantee may be involved. maybe.
putin wasn’t a nobody. he was brought into federal government by one such candidate for presidency, who putin eventually leapfrogged
That’s exactly the kind of thing what I thought it was going to be and thought that was a nobody
Putin has a history of trying to foment chaos in opposing states and using false flag operations. How could Putin cause maximum chaos in the US? A false flag assassination of Trump seems like a reasonable option and something Putin is completely capable of. Go ahead, tell me why I’m wrong.
And if it’s within the range of plausible options, we should at least think a bit on how we would handle it. Should we just let it happen?
But, also, I’ve been watching House of the Dragon.
okay but it’s not even remotely similar situation or crisis than ‘98-99. yeltsin was not eliminating rivals, and actively looking for new allies, as he was facing impeachment in the legislature. he elevated putin who came in as a reformer with kgb credentials. by all reasonable accounts, putin was already a part of a syndicate whose aim was to become the heir apparent when yeltsin is forced to resign.
nothing like that is the current scenario
Blue check claiming draft admins getting shot
https://twitter.com/andrew__roth/status/1574272320071426049?s=46&t=OGM5VVqMQ9UIbyTMpiayXA
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A false flag operation to frame Dems for an assassination attempt on Trump would never work because no one would ever believe that the Dems are effective or ruthless enough to organize a viable assassination attempt. They’d try to negotiate with the Republicans about what caliber of gun to use.
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