Putin has helped put Russia on a trajectory of disaster. All of his vigorous activity in the name of "great Russia" is turning into Russia falling into a tailspin and flying towards its end. Discussions about whether to kill Putin or not to kill him no longer matter. Russia is flying towards its iceberg anyway. The only question is how quickly this process will end. There is no doubt that it will end. The processes taking place both outside and inside Russia indicate that it will not be able to withstand the internal and external pressure, and will ultimately repeat the fate of the Soviet Union. Will it be 15 new entities, or 10, or five, or three?
This is the next question. It depends on many factors that we, unfortunately, cannot predict today.
But we can predict for sure that, as soon as the Russian army is defeated militarily in Ukraine, Putin's regime will falter, regardless of whether Washington wants it to or not, whether Brussels wants Russia to remain like this or not. It no longer depends on the will of this or that person.
Because if there is an internal political earthquake, he does not listen to what is said thousands of kilometers away from this earthquake. He just shakes the system, and it collapses. That's why we should not think in such categories.
The Soviet house of cards collapsed overnight.Let's look at it more strategically and realize that the process of Russia's disintegration is already underway. These events around the Wagner PMC leader Prigozhin, and all these statements by the people around him who hold the real power, and so on, show that this process is inevitable. The only question is what forms it will take. Whether it will be a collapse all at once, or whether it will be the falling away of parts of this dead body of the Russian under-empire and the creation of certain state formations.
I don't believe that we can change anything in this country by simply replacing one dictator with another. This country has historically needed a dictator. If someone else replaces Putin, the system will stay intact. It's just a change of scenery. The question is different. It's not about Putin. The point is that we need this system to collapse. And it can only collapse if it is defeated on the battlefield and the fascist Putin regime itself collapses.
This means that new opportunities arise and a chance arises for various forces in the Russian political elite who want either to preserve Russia (but on certain conditions, for which they will have to do some things that will be dictated to them) or when they will not be able to control the situation and it will go to pieces.
I recently spoke with a man who coordinates national liberation movements in Russia. Yes, the situation is far from clear. The situation is far from the certainty that an uprising will begin tomorrow. But the information that is coming in suggests that it is changing in at least a few national republics of the present-day Russian Federation.
When one piece falls, it has a domino effect. The Soviet Union did not fall apart all at once, but pieces fell off. The first pieces were in the small Baltic republics. And then Ukraine appeared, and then Belarus supported it. And then Comrade Yeltsin woke up. The situation became uncontrollable, despite Gorbachev having an army and the all-powerful KGB, which everyone was terrified of, and it's understandable why.
Meanwhile, the Soviet house of cards collapsed overnight. That is why strategy is, of course, not one or two years. It can be five to seven years. But if we analyze Russia's potential from the inside and outside, more is needed for this time. It may be even in two years.
If we talk about the economic performance of the Russian economy, then, despite the figures drawn by Rosstat, experts who understand this a little better say that the reserves are running out. And there is nowhere to take them from.
I agree with Kirill Budanov's opinion that the sober-minded people around Putin are well aware that their grandfather has gone a little crazy. They see the trend perfectly, just like you and me. They cannot, like us, say what will happen and when, because it is beyond our capabilities, but they clearly see the direction of movement. This direction scares them.
This is what our Western partners are hoping for, hoping that this group around Putin will either suppress him or give him up for slaughter to save themselves and a united Russia. This is what the West is counting on, which does not want destabilization because it does not know what to do with this destabilization.
This is a bad idea, in my opinion. This is the logic of catching up with events rather than creating them. But this is the logic of modern Western liberalism, unfortunately. We have to live with it but have our own plans.
And so, if some intelligence agency manages to push for changes by replacing the dictator, this will also be a plus, but, in my opinion, not the main one. If we leave the situation as it is today, replacing Putin with Mutin will not fundamentally change it. It needs to be changed from the inside, when the system starts to fall apart. This can only be done by our heroic Ukrainian army, our heroic Defense Forces.