in most imaginable scenarios, he has no feasible path to step down and not be absolutely destroyed or killed. but that desperation also makes his throne quite shaky.
Yah, I was set to visit/possibly move there on April 6, but now I’m not even gonna visit.
What do you think he should do and what would be his motivation for doing it?
germany chancellor says germany is going 0% russian gas, and replcing it with US LNG.
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lots of reports of belarusian and chechen regiments refusing their battle objectives. they don’t want to go fight.
Broker a Peace Deal. He’s the only world leader that Putin will listen to right now.
His motivation is money. China wants to be a global economic power and wants smooth relations between all parties to keep the flow of trade going. Now Russia is completely isolated and will economically get crushed, which doesn’t help china in any way trade wise.
It’s too late now but the west is also fully united amongst themselves which allows them to cooperate together on western agendas that are at odds with China. China is better off under a fractionalized west.
If Xi forced peace talks Putin would have no choice. Xi is holding Putin by the balls, he can reduce purchases of oil and gas.
How easily could Putin unilaterally take over control of Belarus if he wished?
right now, as futile as the unilateral attempt to take ukraine. only worse.
I’m ignorant to the degree to which Lukashenko is either dependent upon or afraid of Russia.
incidentally there is a referendum right now (today!) in Belarus. lukashenko is trying to expand his authority again for another 10 years or something.
belarusians are showing up in droves as an antiwar protest
Much less than a week ago. Shrug.emoji
lukashenko and putin will fall at the same time. if one goes, the other country knows they can topple their dictator too. (they should really already know they can do it, ukraine proved putin is trash).
how could putin invade a country where men have balls like these?
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this seems significant:
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1497980539483172872?s=20&t=l0oYYnp4pqfP_FAEZXaQcg
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But under the status quo won’t sanctions cut off Russia from everyone but China, and then Xi can extract extremely lopsided terms for Russia’s resources? I could see this war continuing being better than a settlement from Xi’s perspective. He has a chance to turn Putin into his vassal
The thought of a unified West must be scary for China though. Right now China can steadily increase its power and influence because we are fighting each other over petty issues.
True, but in some respects that genie is out of the bottle. I could imagine China leadership feels the best move is to do nothing for several weeks and see how it plays out. It’s not really to their benefit to play Switzerland and be the middleman for peace talks. Obviously their interests are that no nukes be used and I think they would be in touch with the Kremlin about any escalation in hostilities to try to ensure things don’t go that direction
