Hacker News Reader

Comment by mda | Hacker News Reader

There is another likely scenario, Putin dies for some reason. Replacement gives up on the invasion.

That is getting more likely the more time passes. Obviously for biological reasons but also because more and more people are incentivized to make it happen.

Except that, like Trump during his Presidency, there is no shortage of true believers in his propaganda so the question is how much more likely it is. Are we talking about an infinitesimal technically true increment, or will Putin be out within the decade?

The people next to Trump did not see everything they had built up in their lives torn down, they saw the opposite. Contrary to Trumps entourage Russian oligarchs in general are not stupid. They can clearly see the writing on the wall and they know that if this goes on for too much longer they can kiss their and their children's futures goodbye. Ditto for the various other functionaries.

Except it’s just totally incorrect to think that oligarchs have any degree of control over the situation and any meaningful access to Putin. The relation is reversed, he was the kingmaker and have been controling them fully for quite a while now.

The only force that can stop him is army now and I reeeally don’t think this is what any of the sides (except them) would want because it’s them who pushed him or at least helped him to start the war, obviously. We don’t want another Myanmar, but 100x in size and with a bunch of nuclear warheads.

His close circle of oligarchs and military chiefs are not Putin groupies they 're just getting massively greased. When the tide changes the calculations change. They signed up for a kleptocracy not to get sanctioned and their assets seized.

This is also why there has been an aggressive push to seize oligarch boats, money, etc. Put pressure on them to make something happen domestically.

Discussions around the Magnitsky_Act* went into detail about this, and it came up again during the Trump Impeachments.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act

I didn't know Putin is that old. However in that case you would have expected him to insist on a nice and boring retirement. After all, if you only have 10 good years left (assuming above average life expectancy in russia), why risk turning them into bad years?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com