I don’t think Putin has shown the ability to pull such a maneuver so far outside propaganda and I don’t see a reason to see some ulterior play here either. Not when he has the means to do his purges in less riskier and embarrassing ways. Edit: Also Putin’s last speeches corners Wagner into a win or die situation, which might cause things to get dirty.
I agree with the main idea that Putin is yet to be done for but not sure about the individual points.
Russia is good at defending and attrition-based war, yes, but the blunt of their forces is in Ukraine, the inner territories of Russia is not well fortified because the nuclear threats should keep enemy armies at bay and it’s Russians marching, which makes it hard to sell a “neonazi marching to moscow” story to motivate soldiers.
I’m not sure how “useful” it is to have a 50 thousand man strong army marching towards your capital while you’re trying to spin a “everything going according to plan” story and Ukraine is making its counteroffensive.
Last I checked, China and India were purchasing oil from Russia but at a heavily discounted price, which does not bode well for Russia when it just lost entire Europe as a client.
As for English sources, you just need to choose well. Reuters and AP are respectable sources with no strong bias and the op-eds from sites like Cipher Brief have been very moderated in my opinion.
So Old Vlad, how’s the 3 day special military operation is going?
And requires heating + prying.
If this is considered replaceable, I wonder what an non-replaceable battery would be. Soldered to the main board and trying to unsolder it causes a failsafe to short the CPU?